Gnomeo & Juliet

Animated gnomes portraying a rendition of Shakespeare’s enduring romantic tragedy…I would have love to have seen the pitch to the movie studio on this one.

In a typical suburb, two adjoining houses have occupants who dislike each other, however, a greater, and even more hate-filled feud exists between the occupants of each house’s garden. In a Toy Story-esque situation, the garden gnomes of these houses come to life whenever their owners are not looking, and seem to spend most of their time at war with the gnomes next door.

One house red, the other blue, everything about these two opposing sides seems to clash. That is, you guessed it, until one rugged garden ornament called Gnomeo runs into a beautiful gnome called Juliet, and the two fall for each other. They try to keep their romance a secret, but between murderous gnomes, a squawking plastic ostrich, and a loudmouth frog, their undercover trysts are soon discovered, and the raging war between the blues and reds intensifies.

Few films that came out this year had the same shock factor as Gnomeo & Juliet, simply for the massive challenge that the film had. To try and make a decent animated film, based on arguably the most famous play of all time, using simple garden gnomes! It was quite a funny film at times, some good action moments and childish humour, but largely it failed to come together. The characters seemed a mishmash of original characters from the story and new characters made to fill gaps, and the plot seemed to be a similarly unsuccessful attempt at fusing an old story with a new idea.

The over voices were quite entertaining, in particular Ozzy Osbourne as a reindeer, and the music, mostly Elton John seemed to give the film an entertaining pace and liveliness. Overall though, it was only faintly engaging, and seemed to lack the sophistication of other animated films that are much more entertaining.

It was nice to see a couple of quirky references to the Bard himself though.