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Well, first of all, how many times over the years have we seen films be released that are based on William Shakespeare's legendary play Romeo And Juliet? I have seen quite a few and I haven't loved them that much and when I read about an animated version of the play with rather unusual characters and backgrounds, I was unsure at first but after viewing the trailer, I did think this looked like it could be a load of fun and that is exactly what it was! Without spoiling anything, I was curious about how Gnomeo And Juliet was going to work seeing as it is a child friendly film and the original play ends sadly where it can make audiences cry so I was curious about how the ending worked. I mean, many could say that Gnomeo And Juliet is ripping off the original play and in many ways it is but in other ways, it's not.
The title Gnomeo And Juliet was a really good one and that perhaps made the audience feel suspicious whether it is a film to be taken seriously or not. It was really good how it was made in terms of the events that happen in the original play by using garden ornaments for weapons and other bits. I will tell you what it did bring back memories of and remind me a lot of in a lot of ways was the Toy Story trilogy. Why? Because they are having their own conflicts behind the backs of the humans around them and to them, the gnomes as well as the toys just sit there and do nothing when in the films, they are more important than the people. When you watch Gnomeo And Juliet, you will see what I mean.
The animated tale Gnomeo And Juliet knowingly follows the quintessential star-crossed lovers tragedy Romeo and Juliet, with the unexpected twist of making the characters garden gnomes that can move when human beings aren't watching. Though Gnomeo and Juliet belong to feuding garden gnome families, they meet and fall in love. But the clans' shared animosity is exacerbated when Tybalt dies in part because of actions taken by Gnomeo's to defend a friend that Tybalt was attacking. After getting some sage advice from a statue of William Shakespeare, Gnomeo attempts to set things right, and win the heart of the lawn ornament he loves.
What attracted me the most to this film was the very impressive cast! All of the actors involved are very well known and have given us some good films over the years of different generations and they have all joined together to be part of something that perhaps wasn't praised entirely due to critical response but still got some fun out of it making it as well as watching it as I'm sure they would. I really liked how most of the gnome characters have slightly different names to the ones in the original play such as Gnomeo, of course, Lord Redbrick (leader of Capulet's) and Lady Blueberry (leader of Montague's) but there are also some that have the same original names such as Juliet Capulet, Tybalt, Paris and William Shakespeare (well, Shakespeare wasn't in the play but he, of course, wrote it). In the film, the owners of the houses where they lived were called Capulet (red house with red gnomes) and Montague (blue house with blue gnomes). Every actor gave satisfactory performances in their roles respectively.
The fact that Gnomeo And Juliet was directed by a woman so that is another reason why I really wanted to see it but that was more out of curiosity. The animation was so impressive and just when I thought 3D was dying! This actually was good in 3D and I think deserves to be watched in 3D so that doesn't make it one of those films that are in 3D for an almost pointless reason that is, let's face it, just for the money. This was written by four screenwriters and now after watching it, I'm not surprised because there are so many things that needed to be adjusted and observed in the play and needed to perhaps get the accuracy of it as much as possible. Anyway, it wasn't bad for being something that they were just trying to get a bit of fun out of.
Overall, Gnomeo And Juliet is a film that I really liked for what it was. No, it isn't one of those big films that are to be taken seriously but it certainly delivers its incredibly fun side to both adults and children. It perhaps is the most child-friendly film that I have watched in a long time but I still really enjoyed it despite that. For me so far, 2011 is starting pretty well.
7/10
