YMMV / The Princess and the Goblin

• Americans Hate Tingle: Did not fare well critically or commercially when it was released in the United States in 1994.
• Awesome Music: "A Spark Inside Us", repetition be damned. Even more so the original Hungarian version.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Two minor examples,
  • After Irene and Curdie escape the goblin caves, the first thing Irene says is, "Look, Curdie! The moon!" and both of them burst out laughing. It's as hilarious as it is random. Perhaps the reason is that seeing the moon assures them they're finally out of the goblin caves, so they laugh in relief.
  • Towards the end of the film Curdie searches the castle for Irene and barges into a room occupied by two women sitting at a table and asks them whether they have seen the princess, which they have not. The scene accomplishes absolutely nothing and those two women are never seen again, not even during the climax when the castle is flooded and its inhabitants evacuate into the mountains
• Cult Classic: Not a very well-known film, but has a following to this day.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Turnip, the cat, is the bravest and cleverest character in the film.
• Iron Woobie: Curdie. The poor kid takes a lot of punishment but just keeps on going.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Goblin's pets, a horrific blend of different animals including a wolf nosed rabbit, a snail dinosaur thing, a one horned rat, a toad like creature like crab claws, a serpentine cat creature, and their leader, a blue furred, devil horned cat with snake-like eyes. Additionally, the larger draconic one that briefly appeared when Irene fell down the slope.
  • The attack on Irene at the beginning of the movie, starting off with the hand bursting out to get Turnip as the audience looks down from a bird's eye view after a few seconds of build up with the rumbling rocks.
  • There's also what the Goblins plan on doing to Irene herself. It's not simply a case of marrying her off to Froglip and forcing to her live underground. They also plan to cut off her toes because they find toes ugly (even though the Queen has twelve of them, though she feels ashamed enough to hide in shoes) and keep a bag over her head at all times so Froglip doesn't have to look at her due to finding her ugly by their standards. And even though it's never brought up because this is a children's movie...uh, what happens AFTER the wedding? Yeah, ick. Kind of brings things to a whole new, way horrific level, doesn't it? One could be charitable and say Froglip would find her too repulsive to touch, but what happens when it comes time for little heirs to the Goblin throne? In the original story the Goblin Prince was half human so it is possible for goblins and humans to interbreed in this universe.
  • The reveal that Froglip was behind the door to Irene's room—especially the expression he makes.
• Toy Ship: Irene and Curdie get paired a lot. It helps they are pretty cute together and they each rescue each other in the story.
• Values Dissonance: The reason Harelip's name was changed to Froglip. A harelip is a real deformity and naming your evil, ugly character after something like that would not have gone down well for modern day audiences.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The flooding of the castle in the film's climax because of how tricky and expensive animating water the traditional way can be.
• The Woobie: Irene, arguably — her mother died when she was little, nobody believes her about the goblins or her great-grandmother except for her father (who is absent a lot, being the King) and the goblins intend to kidnap her and marry her to Froglip, who planned to cut off her toes and put a bag over her head.

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