We were given passes to go see a pre-screening of Gnomeo and Juliet this past Saturday. It opens in theaters tomorrow (Feb 11) so now you know in case you were wondering. First off, a trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/e/uXyT9tlQ9Pc
Secondly, some thoughts. I’ve been hearing some critiques around the internet on how in the world could they take a classic tragic story and give it a Disney-esque spin? My answer to that is simply to say that you’ll have to trust me when I say they were true to the traditional ending of the story AND the traditional tied-up-with-a-pretty-bow happy ending.
Scratching your head on how? I’d love to spill the beans on that, but I think I’d better wait a bit. I don’t want to spoil it for you if you are planning to go see the movie.
So I have some yays and nays about the movie.
Yays:
It’s cute. The story is interesting in that most of us (older set) are really familiar with Romeo and Juliet already, so to see it get spun this way with garden gnomes was actually fairly clever.
I appreciated the way Gnomeo and Juliet met each other and the confusion they felt when they later discovered who they really were and then had to reconcile if their color really was who they were or not.
Nays:
The filming was too dark. I don’t mean dark in a mysterious kind of way, but a “can you even see that?” on the screen kind of way. At first I thought they were just trying to make us believe it was night time in the backyard, but they never lightened it up for those scenes and it was a pretty big distraction.
There were several moments of inappropriate inclusions that were simply not necessary for the story. We’re not too terribly picky about what gets included in movies for kids usually, but there is a line we have and I think this movie crossed it.
The 3D nature of this movie does nothing for it. If given a choice, don’t bother with the 3D.
Back to Yays:
They did bring in William Shakespeare in the movie and it didn’t seem forced to me. I was glad he was included and for what he contributed to this version of the story.
So there you have it. Gnomeo and Juliet in a nutshell. If you end up seeing it this weekend or later, please come back and tell me what you thought. I’d love to discuss it with someone else.