Gnomeo & Juliet - 7 stars out of 10

Gnomeo & Juliet - 7 stars out of 10

I can't believe that they translated Romeo & Juliet into garden gnomes... but it totally works!  Anybody who is very familiar with the original story will be thrilled by the parallels between these characters and their Shakespearean counterparts as well as the high-brow literary jokes.  And yet, a child who doesn't know the story at all will still find it entirely entertaining.  I thought that this movie was going to be a lot of fluff but it was incredibly clever, relying more on witty dialogue than slapstick visuals.  The entire visual atmosphere is impressive as well, accentuating the ceramic textures on all of the characters.  Speaking of characters, so many of them are memorable.  My personal favorite is Featherstone the Flamingo - absolutely hysterical.  And the garden Fawn voiced by Ozzy Osbourne?  Genius.  The writers did an amazing job of using actors to voice characters within their stereotypes.  Hulk Hogan, Dolly Parton, Patrick Stewart (his scene as "Will" is fantastic), Maggie Smith, Michael Caine, and Jason Statham all have awesome performances simply because of those stereotypes.  All of the actors are worth mentioning: James McAvoy and Emily Blunt in the leads, and particularly Ashley Jensen as Nanette the Frog (so many laugh-out-loud moments).  I wondered how they would get around having a dual-suicide ending and the writers effectively wrote a happy ending without ever making you think "Wow, they sold out Shakespeare..."  They properly pay homage to his ending while allowing themselves the freedom to end it however they'd like.  I really can't say anything bad about this film.  It's funny, well animated, cleverly cast with an all-star cast, and is up there with Tangled and Toy Story 3 as one of the only good computer animated films to come out over the past 5 years.