Gnomeo and Juliet

Director: Kelly Asbury
Cast: James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Ashley Jensen, Michael Caine,  Matt Lucas, Jim Cummings, Maggie Smith, Jason Statham, Ozzy Osbourne, Stephen Merchant, Patrick Stewart, Julie Walters, Hulk Hogan, Kelly Asbury, Richard Wilson, Dolly Parton
Genre: Animation/Comedy/Romance
Running time: 84 mins. 2011
Rating:★★★

In the neighboring gardens of Montague and Capulet on Verona Avenue, the red and the blue gnomes are at war with one another. But for Gnomeo and Juliet, in this animated film retelling of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, it is love that may triumph a new ending.

As probably with the majority of the population, who had seen the advertisements and trailers of this film (when it was released to the silver screen in 2011), an overwhelming feeling of disgust. Here seemed like another perfect example of Hollywood running out of ideas for films. Throughout cinematic history, Romeo and Juliet has been retold several times from Jerome Robbins's and Robert Wise's in 1961 (West Side Story),  Franco Zeffirelli's in 1968 ( which is the only film on the list that should matter, aside from West Side Story, which is neither here nor there), Baz Luhrmann's in 1996 (a vommit-garbage of a shit film... If you're going to do modern adaptation then use modern language and that's only skimming the surface of this horrific monstrosity. Another horrendous element was Leonardo Di-Crap-pio), Alan Brown's in 2011 ( gay cadets in a military? Could be interesting, but then again, I've seen a LGBT-Shakespeare film that tried too hard, it went limp), and Carlo Carle's in 2013 (which might have been a good idea that I didn't know it's existence during it availability in the theaters because I would keil over in more disgust from Hollywood's continuos proof of their lack of new ideas). 

In finally seeing this film, the intial disgust turned into an enjoyable retelling that has similar wittiness as Shrek and Toy Story. Well, depending on how you want to look at, the subtle or not so subtle references to Shakespeare's work. For instance the mailboxes of Capulet and Montague,  2B and not 2B. But overall, a delightful twist that is better than one would intially think, offshoots from the already well known tragedy into the inner-child imagination of what lawn ornaments do when we're not around. Finally, with an all-star cast that makes the film worth seeing, if you still have hesitation or disgust in watching it.