Gnomeo & Juliet 3D

When visiting Toronto last year for the Canadian premiere of “Idiots and Angels”, I was fortunate to get a tour of the famous Starz Animation Studios. They showed me a very brief clip of their new animated feature project, “Gnomeo and Juliet”. It looked very cool, so I was excited when I finally got to see the finished film, opening up this week.

It has a nice, handsome look – not as dramatic or splendid as “How to Train Your Dragon”, and the story is very cute. The kids loved the cute bunnies and the funny lawn flamingo.

I felt though, that the story-- adapted of course from William Shakespeare, lacked any real drama. The ending sort of felt like they said, “We need to stop at some point, so let's stop here.” Both Toy Story 3 and “Dragon” have very powerful endings and there's a great sense of satisfaction when they wrap up the story. Not so with “Gnomeo & Juliet”.

A lot of the humor comes from Shakespeare references, and I probably missed a lot of them, not being a scholar of The Bard, yet it's an enjoyable film. (My favorite part is the “Terrafirminator” super lawnmower.) Take the kids, they'll love it! I give it a B-.