Gnomeo And Juliet

[Macaluso]

I'm sad this movie is doing so well.

[Ben]

Why, Mac? It's just a sweet, innocent little piece of fun, better than a whole ton of non-Pixar animated rip-offs. Not every film has to be a Tangled or a Toy Story and make us get in touch with our emotions on a deep level. Sometimes the emotion you need is just to feel good, and for me Gnomeo delivers as something that just made me laugh and feel good. Yes, its the equivalent to being an animated romcom, but sometimes those kinds of films can be good too.

[estefan]

Well, Lee Unkrich recently congratulated Kelly Asbury on the film's success over Twitter, so maybe Elton John's phone isn't ringing, because they're contacting the actual director instead. Just a thought.

[EricJ]

And besides, it wasn't March yet, and we didn't have the real Easter-vacation studio movies taking their proper place in theaters (not sure about Rango, but Mars Needs Moms, there's something to be sad about).

Jan-Feb. is the time for movies like "Hoodwinked" to come out and pretend to be king of the playground with nobody else around.
(Which, one might suspect, is the reason that Disney chose the release date that they did--When they put more interest into releasing a Zemeckis movie, you know you're on the low end of the totem pole.)

[Bill1978]

Sure it's well known that February is the dumping ground for movies these days. BUT if a movie sucks it will still suck in February and people won't see it. The fact that Gnomeo has shown some legs over the past week indicates that the public think it is better than your typical February dumped movie.

Gnomeo is doing great guns in Australia and February isn't known for being a dumping ground in Australia. And it is succeeding without the assistance of school holidays.

[Ben]

That's what I meant, above, when I said that it wouldn't be doing so good if it were seriously a bad movie. Even given the release date, bad movies just wouldn't make money whenever they're released, so it goes to show that they had a decent movie on their hands and chose to bury it. Against the odds, it's bounced back and is doing very nicely, which it deserves to.

Needless to say that when Mars and Rango open, it's stock will drop, but I'm just glad it came out and was noticed as opposed to disappearing forever.

[Ben]

For those that weren't sure about Gnomeo & Juliet, the result is now on home video. Here we review the 3D/BD combo pack, though the "flat" and DVD editions are also covered:

http://animatedviews.com/2011/gnomeo-an ... dvd-combo/

I tried to give an account of the production history of the movie, since it was kind of disowned by Disney before it became a hit. On disc, it's clearly a Disney film, and has more heart than some of the Studio's recent CG films. It doesn't really break any new ground, but the animation is impressive and it's well worth a look!

[Randall]

Good animation, yes, but a weird little film. Mostly, I didn't like the classic Elton soundtrack, which felt forced and inappropriate (and I love Elton). Plus---- garden gnomes?! Truthfully, my wife and I both nodded off while the kids watched, at the cheap theatre last weekend.

[Dacey]

"Cutting-hedge animation?" Ben, you should be ashamed of yourself.

[Ben]

You need to see it in 3D, Rand. 3D makes it soo much better.

Dacey...never ashamed of my puns, though I make around a handful of people groan each day with them!

[EricJ]

You need to see it in 3D, Rand. 3D makes it soo much better. )

Finally caught it on 3D Blu-ray (hence the bump), since I had a free rental on Vudu.com.
(You'd be surprised what you have the urge to rent, just to justify that new 3D screen, until they start freeing the movies out of "exclusive-deal" bondage.)

Think the Lasseter comment was originally more in the sense that on paper, the idea sounded suspiciously like the Broom Movie (and all that that implied), but I suspect he has little patience for the Shrek clones either, made by animators who grew up thinking that that was what animated movies should look like.
This should by all rights have been an Aardman movie, but when we get the Dreamworks Karaoke Party at the end (not to mention that other Katzenbergesque favorite, "All female characters are persecuted tower-princesses who know kung fu "), we know it...ain't.
My curiosity was only piqued by the Elton John songs, of which we get exactly three--Which would normally be Katzenberg Trope #3, "Wacky overexposed 70's songs", but at least there's some comfort in knowing that Elton was putting them in himself.

(Still, when we get wacky faux-DW pop-ref comedies where the characters sing "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart"...you know what particular demons THAT'S going to conjure up, especially for remnants of the Disney/Stainton years. )

[Ben]

Well, I was of course kidding about my 3D comment and needing to see things in that gimmicky format to make them better.

As for the rest of that splurge of letters and words, I think I kind of picked up what you were trying to say...but not quite.

[EricJ]

Was just saying that although the directors played the Auto-Dreamworks Assembly Line of pop-jokes, also couldn't help wondering whether handing the project to Miramax brought out Miramax's old "Hoodwinked" urge again to become the "third Dreamworks" of CGI family films.
And as such, I found myself flashing back on "Ella Enchanted" also ending with a big character-karaoke party of Elton John songs. (Most would have just flashed back on "Chicken Little".)

[Ben]

No, because the Miramax of Hoodwinked (not actually a Miramax film, by the way, but put out by the Weinsteins) was very different to the Miramax that was handed Gnomeo.

By the time of Elton's film, the Weinsteins were far, far away from Disney's, and Miramax was being run by someone else as a return to the smaller, independent live-action distributor it started as.

Gnomeo was actually made out of house, with the Miramax name only attached as a way for Disney to put it out without using the Disney name. And, anyway, as we know, when it did come time to put it out, Miramax had been sold and it came out under the Touchstone banner.

So...no, none of that really adds up. Just, y'know, sayin'...

[Bill1978]

I must say seeing Hello Hello get nominated for Best Original Song in the Critics Circle Awards has me preparing myself for disappointment this reward season. Hello Hello is going to get nominated at these awards show cause it's a duet with Lady GaGa. From a story point of view I found the other original song in G&J - Love Builds A Garden - to be more emotional and more fitting to the story. Hello Hello is just a generic song, remove it from the G&J and dump it in another movie and it still works. Sure you could argue the same for Love Builds A Garden but I just think that it links with G&J more closely, tells us Featherstone's history in under 5 mintues and also shows what could happen with the actual love story unfolding on our screen. I can see the Academy nominating it jsut to get GaGa to perform hoping to increase the ratings.