Gnome Heist

Considering it was made in about a week-and-a-half to meet a competition deadline, Gnome Heist truly makes you wonder what writer, director and also star Alice Dieli, not to mention their clearly very adept crew, could do with even just double that production time. And by achieving everything it does in a runtime that barely squeaks past the four-minute mark, Gnome Heist proves the age-old adage of quality over quantity.

Right away we catch up with Mia (Dieli), who clearly has had a day of it already, long leather coat dripping wet from apparent run-ins with fountains and pigeons as she strides through the blazing sunshine to finish a favour for her unique ex-boyfriend (Nicosia). Hating herself every minute along the way for agreeing to it all in the first place, Mia’s favour sees her carting a bursting suitcase all the way across town to meet him for the drop-off. The contents? Gnomes, of course. But these aren’t just any ordinary gnomes, and upon final delivery, Mia soon realises that the gnomes hold a somewhat valuable secret.

Having already successfully shown off their skills within the horror genre with their previous impressive short What’s Your Poison?, Dieli proves they are just as capable with the lighter stuff here as well. Gnome Heist, bounced along by slick editing and a soundtrack of amped guitar injects a very silly premise with a lot of fun, swagger and style, and Dieli’s performance in front of the camera is just as strong as behind it, Mia striking an interesting character full of quirks and snappy quips but who is also clearly a bit of a mess, a character that could easily entertain us for much longer.

Of course, at only four minutes the film does leave you yearning for a bit more, and especially at this kind of enthusiastic pace it’s all over in quite a flash, and we don’t get to explore certain characters maybe as much as we'd like, or indeed the joy of seeing Mia’s preceding debacles wrestling with pigeons and falling in fountains. But everything we need to know is conveyed quickly and effectively in what is a contained but nonetheless complete story, and actually, it says a lot more about Dieli’s ability for entertaining storytelling that even after the credits start rolling, we want to keep hanging out in this world for just a little while longer.

Gnome Heist is punchy, it’s silly and it’s just plain fun, while also being sharply written and beautifully shot to boot.