Hot! Gnomeo And Juliet

Google pics continues to fail me, so here's another review, this time of Gnomeo and Juliet . I've been wanting to see this movie for months and recently saw it at the bargain theater.

A modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet featuring garden gnomes and lawn creatures, Gnomeo and Juliet stays relatively true to the main plot of Shakespeare's play. The red gnomes and the blue gnomes populate neighboring lawns owned my two older British humans who do not get along. Thus, the red and blue despise each other. Gnomeo of the blue gnomes meets Juliet of the red gnomes when they both cover up their colors and attempt to retrieve a wondrous orchid. The banter and constant exchange of ownership of the orchid is incredibly cute and charming, and for me, perhaps the best scene in the film. The rest is rather expected, even the happy ending because, of course, this is Disney.

As in the Toy Story movies, the inanimate objects in Gnomeo and Juliet behave like humans and have human relationships and emotions, yet must freeze whenever a human is around. But the best bits are cute parallels in how their culture parallels with ours. Garden gnomes racing each other on lawnmowers in a rumble is inherently a funny premise. I thought it strangely cute that a statue of a mushroom somehow works as a Gnomeo's dog, even though there are no facial features on the mushroom and no tail to wag. Also, I found myself coveting Juliet's technicolor tower complete with neon flashing lights and a moat covered in lily pads.

An unexpected character was the plastic pink supposedly one-legged lawn flamingo, whose crazy Spanish accent was a nice contrast to the British accents in the movie. I honestly thought his character was most compelling, probably because he had the most back story, told in a series of montages about his lost love, a matching pink flamingo, and when they faced each other, their bowed heads and curved necks created a pink heart (echoed in the orchid that brings Romeo and Juliet together).

I did enjoy watching this film, but I also felt like it was a little too slick, moved a little too quickly for me to engage emotionally. While there was plenty of cute, I never did laugh out loud, the way I often do during Pixar films and some of the stronger Disney films. Overall, it was worth seeing, but I'm glad I didn't pay full price.

I want a garden where I'd plant purple orchids surrounded by gnomes.