Mania Grade: B-
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- Starring the Voices of: James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Jason Statham, Ozzy Osbourne
- Written by: Kelly Asbury, Mark Burton, Kevin Cecil,
Emily Cook, Kathy Greenberg, Andy Riley,
Steve Hamilton Shaw, John R. Smith, and Rob Sprackling
- Directed by: Kelly Asbury
- Studio: Touchstone Pictures
- Run Time: 84 minutes
- Rating: G
- Series:
Mania Review: Gnomeo and Juliet
Hang on, you mean it doesn't suck? By
Rob Vaux
February 11, 2011
Gnomeo and Juliet
© Touchstone Pictures/Robert Trate
How on Earth does a movie like Gnomeo and Juliet work? Judging by the ads, it has high-concept disaster written all over it. A Shakespearean children’s film, involving kitschy lawn ornaments and the music of Elton John? Someone save it a spot on next year’s Razzie’s list! Yet against all odds, Gnomeo and Juliet actually fulfills its promise of low-key family fun. You may not remember it in six months, but for now it constitutes a breezy bit of fluff to nicely occupy your time.
And it certainly holds an English sense of humor. The film’s best moments come with its playful digs at Shakespeare, from a pre-credits send-up of Romeo and Juliet’s famous intro to a late-inning consultation with a talking statue of the Bard himself. The rules roughly follow those of the Toy Story movies: various tacky knickknacks in various English gardens come to life when nobody’s looking and create their own society in the process. In this case, they belong to two feuding neighbors, with the blue Montague gnomes making war against those red Capulets across the fence. Gnomeo and Juliet never strays from the basic structure of Shakespeare, though it varies wildly in the specifics. The male lead is an amalgamation of the actual Romeo and Mercutio, voiced by James McAvoy as a sort of pint-sized daredevil given over to all manner of outrageous pranks. Juliet (voiced by Emily Blunt) lives life in a gilded cage, squashed by her well-meaning father (voiced by Michael Caine) who fears that the low-grade ceramics from which she is composed may shatter at the first sign of trouble. Naturally, she sneaks out one night, where she meets Gnomeo and… well, any high school freshman knows the rest.
Director Kelly Asbury adopts a suitably light-hearted approach, keeping the generalities in place while eliminating the darker elements that may trouble small children. Indeed, the entire film skews largely towards the younger set, and while a smattering of pop culture in-jokes show up, they don’t overwhelm the tone the way they might with other movies of this ilk. The script betrays a lot of puns (and a few deliberately mangled lines from Shakespeare) but largely refrains from fart jokes and similar toilet humor. The characters’ acrobatics give Gnomeo and Juleit some visual distinction, which Asbury translates into an appropriately spirited atmosphere. The gags are largely hit-or-miss, but they strike home far more often than one would expect; while flat-out belly laughs are few and far between, the majority of the film produces a steady stream of mild chuckles.
Those strengths allow Gnomeo and Juliet to more or less pull a series of seemingly incompatible elements together. The soundtrack consists entirely of Elton John songs – some more appropriate than others – which often compete with the bubbly visuals for our attentions. The high brow emotional elements clash with the inherent silliness of the concept at times, making it hard to sympathize with the central figures as much as we should. And yet thanks to Asbury, it all feels more or less coherent rather than just a grab-bag of pop culture riffs.
The cast helps, anchored by McAvoy, but also including some old-school pros like Caine and Maggie Smith. The best performance of the lot actually comes from Jason Statham, playing a curiously spot-on version of Tybalt to serve as Gnomeo’s foil. Perfect? Far from it. But neither does it possess aspirations for anything other than a slightly addled good time. Kids will enjoy it, adults will survive it, and the final credits will leave you in a better mood than when you started. Not bad for a bunch of Home Depot escapees. We’ll even forgive them the puns.
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wait you mean it doesn't suck???? Wow....I never would have guessed this one...I mean the caprio version of romeo and juliet made me want to go and kill someone as I am very much a shakespeare purist. I may have to check this out British humor often works very well for me...