Gnomeo and Juliet. Dir. Kelly Asbury. Perf. Emily Blunt, James McAvoy, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Patrick Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, and Elton John. Touchstone Pictures. 11 February 2011. The latest of the growing number of animated Shakespeare-related films will open this coming February. It seems quite appropriate that Touchstone Pictures would produce a film that relies so heavily on a Shakespeare text.
The trailer follows:
Links: The Film at IMDB.
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Did you get the feeling that there's any Shakespeare in this, like, at all? Looks disappointing from the trailer.
ReplyDeleteCompare "Sealed with a Kiss", which does not have the high quality animation we've come to expect from Disney but does end up using a surprising amount of actual text from the play.
Thanks for the comments, Duane!
ReplyDeleteI do think that the film may be quite promising, particularly looked at as a derivative version of the play rather than a straighter and stricter following. Sealed with a Kiss (a Romeo and Juliet derivative staring seals and walruses and such) showed some promise, but it wasn't all that griping to me. And the walrus was really scary.
The trailer does seem to emphasize the Sampson and Gregory v. Abraham and Balthazar motif over the romantic elements. But that's actually one of my favorite parts of the play!
kj
I'll no doubt see it, and I'm curious what my kids (all of whom are familiar with Romeo and Juliet) will think. There'll no doubt be changes from the way Sealed with a Kiss interpreted it (for instance making a generic "Prince" bad guy who played the role of Prince, Tybalt and Paris all rolled into one). And though their Mercutio was a joke-telling buffoon for the first half (who even used "wherefore" incorrectly, damn him), his downfall was actually done rather well, complete with "Why the devil came you between us?" and "I thought it for the best" exchange. Or however that goes, I'm winging this.
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