Running time: 83 mins. Starring: Featuring the voices of James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Jason Statham, Maggie Smith, Ashley Jensen, Matt Lucas, Stephen Merchant. Director: Kelly Asbury.
Shakespeare’s tale of star-cross’d lovers and self-sacrifice is given a new lick of paint in Kelly Asbury’s fast-paced computer animated comedy.
Set in the gardens of fair Verona Drive, Gnomeo & Juliet pits feuding clans of blue and red ornaments against one another, set to a soundtrack of classic and original songs by Elton John, also the film’s executive producer.
The irreverent tone is struck from the opening frames when a pint-sized gnome shuffles on to a stage and tells us: “The story you are about to see has been told before. A lot.”
Indeed it has, but Asbury’s film tries to distinguish itself with visual gags (a laptop computer with a banana logo) and the obligatory pop culture references like the gnome, joined at the base to his mate, who sighs, “I wish I could quit you” a la Brokeback Mountain.
High-speed lawnmower chases involving a beast of a machine called the Terrafirminator (“It’s unnecessarily powerful!” declares the advertising) are juxtaposed with the first meeting of the eponymous lovers, set to a smoochy ballad.
Alarmingly, the script has been cobbled together by seven writers, which might explain why for all its boundless cheer and cute animal sidekicks, Gnomeo & Juliet is not quite the perfect gnomance it could have been.
Some gags are recycled from the screenwriters’ compost heap (“I’m not illiterate – my parents were married!”) but we root for the pint-sized central characters, right up to the madcap, overblown finale.
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