A William Shakespeare classic romance gets the animated treatment with GNOMEO AND JULIET.This Capulet/Montague struggle is set in modern times, with feuding next-door neighbors serving as the leaders of their factions. The factions are garden gnomes, the red ones as Capulets and the blue ones as the Montagues. In the midst of the gnomes backyard brawl, a blue gnome named Gnomeo and a red one named Juliet meet on neutral ground and fall in love.
With several different versions of Romeo and Juliet being displayed on the big screen, it was bound to be animated. As many liberties as Baz Luhrmann took with his 1996 Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes, MTV-stylized version of Romeo and Juliet, the wild director has nothing on GNOMEO AND JULIET. To call GNOMEO AND JULIET an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is not really a just statement. To call it an excuse to capitalize on the classic’s timeless popularity is more accurate. GNOMEO AND JULIET is a thinly-veiled version of Romeo and Juliet, one which realizes as much on pop culture as it does the literary masterpiece.
References and source material aside, this kiddie romancer does have a few things going for it. A sub-plot involving a pink flamingo provides more substance then the central conceit, and an on-line add for lawn mowers, voiced by Hulk Hogan, delivers some much needed laughs. I also liked the inherent danger in being a garden gnome, and the clank or clink at which most of their encounters begin and end.
GNOMEO AND JULIET is loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, so much so, that it dodges the tragedy completely, and yet fails to capture much comedy in a genre that almost always demands it.
Grade: C
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