Leapin’ Leprechauns (1995)

Directed by Ted Nicolaou
Written by Michael McGann and Ted Nicolaou
Starring
- John Bluthal
- Grant Cramer
- Sharon Lee Jones
- Gregory Edward Smith
- Godfrey James
Produced by Vlad and Oana Paunescu
Executive produced by Charles Band and Debra Dion

I’ve always thought that Ted Nicolaou was a much better director than the material he was given. Subspecies (1991) really was a striking movie, as (to a progressively lesser extent) were the sequels. And I’m willing to attribute to him whatever positives there are in a standardized Moonbeam Entertainment production like Leapin’ Leprechauns, despite the fact that in plot, location, and cast it echoes so many of Nicolaou’s other rent-paying kidvids.

Our tale begins in Ireland (i.e., Romania), where old Michael Dennehy (John Bluthal) owns and cares for ancient Castle Dunsmore and the Fairy Hill right beside it. Dennehy’s a believer in the “little people,” and that’s the focus of his tour when buses drop tourists off at the bottom of the hill. And why shouldn’t he believe? In fact, most of his best friends are leprechauns, including King Kevin (Godfrey James) and his two bumbling manservants Patrick and Flynn (James Ellis and Sylvester McCoy — yes, THAT Sylvester McCoy). If you’ve ever seen Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), you’ll recognize the relationship between big and little peoples here, though Dennehy and King Kevin don’t spend nearly so much time trying to outsmart each other.

The party can start — the dancing girls are here! Woooo!

But Dennehy’s quaint and folkloric lifestyle is interrupted by a couple of surveyors, who claim to have been hired by Dennehy’s son Johnny (Grant Cramer of Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988)), who lives in the U.S. and has entirely ditched any Irish accent he may have once had. Johnny has apparently also absorbed that nasty American penchant for capitalism, as he’s surreptitiously working on a deal to turn his family’s ancestral holdings into an amusement park: IrelandLand.

IrelandLand.

Look, I know that Moonbeam Entertainment (and its kidvid successors, the Kushner-Locke Company) used the “evil developer” cliche to an degree second only to the purveyors of “bikini business” subgenre. (You know, the flicks in which a bunch of hot twenty-something girls revitalize a failing business plan by stripping down to their swimsuits.) And I understand that Leapin’ Leprechauns is in large part only rearranging plot elements from Dragonworld (1994), best of the Moonbeam productions. But still: IrelandLand? A theme park of fake plasticky Ireland, located in the middle of the real Ireland? Did the lessons of EuroDisney go unheeded? This is probably the least dangerous “evil developer” plotline ever, because there is no way that any investor would sink a single dollar into so ludicrous a scheme.

“Glory be! Will you look at the size of her caboose!”

Yes, I know. In a movie filled with leprechauns, I’m bellyaching about investment feasibility. But… IrelandLand.

Right. Anyway. In order to get his father out of the way of the surveyors, Johnny invites him to visit them in America. Michael leaps at the chance, and the leprechauns decide on their own that they should stow away and accompany Michael to look out for him. Also inviting herself on the trip is Queen Maeve of the Fairies (Tina Martin), much to King Kevin’s consternation. But at least she’s better than Finvarra, lord of the dark sidhe. According to King Kevin’s court wizard (Ion Haiduc, the native Romanian actor whose face is omnipresent in these movies), if Kevin and Maeve go, Finvarra would also be allowed to cross the Atlantic… so let’s just not tell him, shall we?

The action quickly moves from Ireland (i.e., Romania) to Colorado (i.e., Romania), where Michael quickly becomes a source of consternation to his son Johnny, his daughter-in-law Sarah (Sharon Lee Jones), and his grandchildren Mikey and Melanie (Gregory Edward Smith of TV’s Everwood and Erica Nicole Hess). Why? Because he won’t stop talking about the little people! Even before he discovers the pint-sized stowaways in his luggage, he’s already prattling on about how he’s not lonely at Fairy Hill because of his best friends, the leprechauns. And once he discovers that he’s not the only Irish visitor, he keeps talking to King Kevin and crew in front of his son’s family, even though they can’t see the wee folk.

“And I dinna appreciate that joke about my rear, Mr. Reviewer!”

Yup, that’s right. Only Michael can see them, at least initially. Because you have to believe and want to see them, or at least express such a belief and desire vocally. So while the leprechauns cause minor mischief all around the house, Johnny starts to fear for his father’s sanity as he mutters admonitions and epithets at the unseen troublemakers.

And wouldn’t you know it, Johnny’s next-door neighbors, the Voyznizcs (Mihai Niculescu and Dorina Lazar) are both severe and rationalistic psychiatrists…

Naturally, the family starts coming around to the side of belief, beginning with the youngest, Melanie. Because nothing draws a family together and makes their life happy like seeing little people that others can’t see. I suppose one could make a case for “having faith” as the subtext of the movie, but it’s so sketchily cribbed from every other movie ever made in the same vein that it’s not even worth defining as the theme. If it weren’t for spooky, skullfaced Finvarra showing up late and forcing the issue, one could easily see the movie ending with Michael going back to Ireland, only to see Fairy Hill demolished to make way for the theme park monstrosity.

Bad cloud! Baaaaad cloud!

That said, the movie did impress me technically in one regard (keep in mind, please that to be impressive a movie only needs to exceed my expectations for it, which in this case weren’t terribly high). In order to render the little people as, well, little people, Nicolaou relied almost entirely on forced perspective. Now, it’s neither a new technique nor an expensive one (in fact, it’s as old as the hills and as cheap as pointing the camera), but it does take both technical forethought and a certain cinematic sensibility to pull it off without being stiff and obvious in one’s cinematography and editing, and Nicolaou has done that here. Thanks to a smattering of oversized sets and some genuinely clever camera setups, Leapin’ Leprechauns exceeds the simple point-and-shoot production values of so many movies in its price range.

“Finally! We got his Lucky Charms!”

And the script does manage at least a baseline of competence; in other words, there are no obvious or disconcerting malformities. The movie’s so far from being “immortal cinema” that one might almost claim it to have crossed the speciation line; but given that Moonbeam or Kushner/Locke productions are as a rule so lacking in ambition as to be almost ambitious in their pursuit thereof (now THERE’S a sentence I’m going to regret tomorrow), this one comes out in the black simply by presenting us with no glaring, intelligence-insulting flaws. Given the lackluster product that has been at other times foisted off on the kidvid demographic by most of the same personnel, I’m willing to say that this one’s in the upper half of their inventory.