The opening prologue of "Gnomeo and Juliet" features a ceramic garden gnome — indeed a character in the movie itself — on a stage reading a snippet of "Romeo and Juliet," the work on which this animated film is based. He's dodging "the hook," which keeps trying to snatch him off stage. Eventually a trap door seals his fate, and the movie can begin.
The message ostensibly is that Shakespeare, with his iambic pentameter and stilted language, is so dull that we can't even suffer a few scant seconds of it to provide proper background for this latest adaptation of it. So why, then, are we watching this adaptation?
Quite frankly, that's a question I'm still wrestling with. This version, using those gnomes as stand-ins for real people and doing an almost "Toy Story"-like shtick with them, fails to impress, from its lackluster romance to its stilted action sequences to its goofy, random cameos.
If you know "Romeo," you pretty much know this story, but here's the twist: The Montagues and Capulets are neighboring clans of garden gnomes come to life, who secretly help bolster the gardens of their owners. One side of the fence wears blue hats and are know, of course, as Blues; the other side red with a similarly chromatic nickname. The two sides, of course, hate each other (why one person would buy all blue-hatted gnomes and their neighbor all red-hatted gnomes is beyond me, but the humans seem on some level to share their collections' rivalry).
Anyway, fair Juliet (voice of Emily Blunt) meets Gnomeo (James McAvoy), and the two hit it off, initially not knowing they are supposed to hate each other, then finally openly questioning why they have to. And it's a good question, too: In a world where garden gnomes are so sequestered, the pool of potential mates is pretty thin. Are Gnomeo and Juliet not to ever marry?
You can pretty much guess what happens from there, save one rather troubling potential development for a kids' film: We're not treated to glass-gnome suicide, though we get some of the lead-in to that plot thread (and, to their credit, the filmmakers address this change with a statue of Will Shakespeare himself [aptly voiced by Patrick Stewart] arguing his ending is better).
The comedy is strictly second-grade stuff — catering to plays on the word "gnome" whenever possible and heavily using pop culture and slang references, though most of them are nigh as outdated as Shakespeare's own colloquialisms.
The romance between the two leads is almost non-existent, and it's almost entirely in the delivery that it fails. "Romeo and Juliet" is, of course, a very long play, and cramming this story into hardly an hour and a half makes for difficult execution of the material, moreso given the time devoted to gnome jokes and establishing the rules for these guys (much like "Toy Story," the gnomes freeze when humans are around).
There are a variety of supporting characters, from Tybalt (voiced by Jason Statham) to a frog who falls in love with the gnome Juliet's father (Michael Caine) would have his daughter marry, a flamingo who has lost love and a blue mushroom character who doesn't speak and seems to be the gnome equivalent of a dog.
There are also randomly a lot of Elton John songs, and even a gnomic version of the rocker, all of which sounds strange until you notice at the film's conclusion that John is an executive producer.
The voice work is fine, with such names as Caine and Statham, along with, randomly, Hulk Hogan among others tossed into the mix.
The entire world is too derivative, the characters too cardboard cutout and the jokes and the story too slapdash and obvious to be worthwhile. Skip this, unless you really love gnomes.