Gnomeo and Juliet

James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Patrick Stewart, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne, Jason Stratham, and Dolly Parton.  Wow.  Just consider that cast for a moment.  Have you ever seen a bigger bucket of crazy in your life?  I mean seriously.... Ozzy and the Hulkster in the same film?  And it didn't destroy the space time continuum?  Amazing.

Of course it helps that a lot of these folks only have a line or two in the film.  No doubt it also saved the universe by being rather pedestrian in nature.  As the title says it steals "Romeo and Juliet," and applies it to the world of garden gnomes.  The garden gnomes gad about except when there are people then they stand still.  Hmmm, that sounds familiar..."Toy Story" comes to mind.  Could they be stealing from TWO sources?  Well the more the merrier I suppose.  Anyway, these gnomes live in two gneighboring gardens.  Because their ownes are fighting with each other, it carries down to everyone of that house.  So the red gnomes hate the blue ones and vice versa.  So of course it will be troble with the red gnome Gnomeo (ugh) falls in love with the blue gnomre Juliet.  From here it basically follows the classic play till the end when gnomeo says basically "Suck it tragedy," and they add the world's largerst lawn and gnome mower.

Critics have mostly savaged this film.  Is it deserved?  Well, it's not the most original thing as you can tell.  And it has a hard time keeping a consistent tone.  It shifts from following the play, to low brow humor, to a snide little injoke for adults, and so on.  It's like like the film is juggling chainsaws and babies and it's not really paying attention to the audience of obvious reasons.  As a kid's film it's mostly ok, though I doubt they'll get jokes like speaking in Japanese and such.  As a film for adults and kids, it's mostly painless but it will make parents wish they were watching "Toy Story."  For fans of animation I'd just say you probably have something better to do or watch.  For Elton John fans (who's songs fuel this thing like fizzy lifting pop in Willy Wonka) you'll either ignore the film and tap your toes or find yourself in despair asking, "Why oh why?"

But they did get a hell of a cast.