Stanley (A Troll in Central Park)

Stanley is the main protagonist of the critically-panned film mh:awfulmovies:A Troll in Central Park. He is a good-natured little troll who literally has a green thumb that can grow flowers, something he, unlike any other troll, loves. He was voiced by the late Dom DeLuise.

Why He'll Never Have A Dream Come True

 * 1) He is a very badly written protagonist, even for animated film standards.
 * 2) * Of all the characters Don Bluth has ever created, he can easily be considered the worst character, due to the various reasons as listed below.
 * 3) His design is ugly as it looks like a mix between Bilbo Baggins, Dopey, and Lucky the Leprechaun.
 * 4) He is incredibly annoying and won’t shut up every minute he's onscreen.
 * 5) His personality is incredibly sappy and saccharine, so much that he makes many other iconic children's characters such as the ones from Care Bears, Sesame Street, My Little Pony, etc. look like tough guys in comparison to him.
 * 6) He is also very cowardly, as he chickens out when Gus wants him to save Rosie from Gnorga, which he even calls him out for (and then the film tries to portray Gus in the wrong, even though it's one of the few things to like about him).
 * 7) Similar to Don Bluth's version of Thumbelina, despite him being the main protagonist and gets a fair amount of screen time, he barely does anything important until near the end of the movie when he fights Gnorga, as Gus and Rosie are the only characters that do anything substantiate in the film, and they are just major characters.
 * 8) He contributes way too much filler throughout the movie, so much to the point that it bores, annoys and frustrates the heck out of the audience that is watching his film, which is evident every time he summons happy dancing flowers around Rosie. On top of that, all the happy dancing flowers he summons are excessively sickly sweet and saccharine.
 * 9) *Of all the many scenes of unneeded filler found throughout his film, nearly 99% of the filler moments of his film are entirely on scenes featuring him, with his worst and most pointless filler scene of the entire film being the infamous sequence of his sentient talking flowers dancing around for long periods of time to cheer up a crying Rosie (which is caused by Gus hurting her feelings by taking her away from him).
 * 10) *The scene of him running around Central Park goes on for way too long.
 * 11) Speaking of his magic, it pretty much does whatever the plot needs it to do. As demonstrated when he enlarges Gus' toy boat which he repaired, transforming it into a "dream boat" to save the kids, and they escape together using his green thumb. But it was never established that it could do that and so far, it has only been shown to be able to grow flowers.
 * 12) Speaking of his flowers, most of the character designs of his sentient flowers look like direct rip-offs of the same sentient flowers from Disney's Alice in Wonderland.
 * 13) His quote that "Anything is real, starts with a dream" not only doesn’t make any sense but is also a bad lesson for children, as dreams that come naturally don’t happen immediately or in real life; instead dreams can only be real when you really do something about it.
 * 14) He is also incredibly stupid as well. Worse still, his stupidity isn't funny, cute or endearing in the slightest, but rather irritating and frustrating.
 * 15) He's extremely immature as he cried very childishly after taking refuge under the bridge because of all the chaotic chases he previously endured upon his arrival at New York city.
 * 16) *And because of his sheer immaturity along with his acts of unadulterated cluelessness, he always behaves like such a nitwit, it makes him out to be this complete imbecile all the way through.
 * 17) His attraction to Rosie is unnerving, sickening, and creepy.
 * 18) *While his attraction to Rosie is supposed to be treated as something that is cute, charming, and innocently platonic, it instead comes off as disturbingly pedophilic, because of his overly-excited reactions when Rosie kisses him on the nose (as he literally flies into the air screaming with joy with green energy coming from his lower regions), as well as the fact that Rosie, keep in mind, is only a toddler.
 * 19) *His constant running gag of his wiggling ears, even before he meets Rosie and Gus, while they're supposed to be cute and endearing to children, but instead he comes out as a creepy pedophile who uses his sentient dancing flowers to lure them to him for this reason above.
 * 20) His songs "Absolutely Green" and "Welcome To My World" are awful, unoriginal, poorly-written, cheesy and serve no purpose in the film other than just filler (in a film that's already full of it).
 * 21) Most of his dialogue is very laughable.
 * 22) Not even close to relatable, even to his film's youngest of target audience.
 * 23) His "perfect world" is shown to be filled with trolls who look and think exactly like him. How exactly is that meant to be a good thing?
 * 24) The ending where he covers up the whole city of New York in plants is supposed to be happy and uplifting, but it is actually rather horrifying if you think about it, because his action of covering up the whole city of New York in plants is comparable to that of what villain characters like Audrey II (from Little Shop of Horrors), Undergrowth (from Danny Phantom) or Poison Ivy (from Batman) would've ended up doing had they not been brought to justice by Seymour, Danny Phantom and Batman respectively. Consequently, this heavily implies that Stanley himself has an evil plan of engulfing the entire world he lives in with plants in mind the whole time and therefore proves that Gnorga, the film's main antagonist, does have a valid reason on why she bans flowers in the Kingdom of Trolls, and somehow, we are still supposed to root for him.
 * 25) *Because of his actions at the ending, both he and Gnorga suffer from rather poor representation as the protagonist and antagonist respectively, and basically, the movie tries to force viewers to like the protagonist (Stanley) and to despise the villain (Gnorga) without giving the usual proper characterization to them as a reason to do this.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The concept of Stanley's characterization as a good-natured, cheerful, optimistic yet cowardly little troll who literally has a green thumb that can grow flowers has potential as a decent protagonist, but sadly is executed poorly due to the film's overall badly-rushed writing.
 * 2) Dom DeLuise does an alright job voicing him.
 * 3) He faces his fears to stand up against the evil Gnorga to protect both Gus and Rosie near the end of the film because Gus called him out on his cowardice, which means he did have some minor character development, though that isn't saying much.

Trivia

 * Stanley is the final Don Bluth character voiced by Dom DeLuise.
 * Stanley shares several similarities to that of Tiger from Don Bluth's own An American Tail in the sense that they're both cowardly comic relief sidekicks to the child protagonists in their respective films (who co-incidentally, also share the same voice actor Phillip Glasser), right down to even sharing the same voice actor Dom DeLuise, except that Tiger is a funny, likable, charming and well-written character while Stanley is none of those things.
 * By pure co-incidence, Stanley also shares several similarities to Giselle from Enchanted, as both of them are relentlessly cheerful and optimistic protagonists who get banished by evil queens to New York under the assumption that they'd be miserable over there, only to befriend two New York residents of different ages (one cynical older male, one cute younger female) after some fish-out-of-water struggles upon arrival there at New York, successfully win them over with their cheery philosophies, optimism and musical numbers (with the little girl character being the first of the duo to befriend said protagonist), and even confront the evil queens responsible for their respective plights when their respective evil queens pursue them and their respective allies over at New York. Except that Giselle is a likable and well-written character while Stanley is none of those things.
 * Co-incidentally, following Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox (including 20th Century Fox, which owns current rights to the character's film as of 2002) as of March 20, 2019, hence this reunites both Disney's Giselle and Don Bluth's Stanley under the same roof.