Gnomeo and Juliet came out in 2011. I was so excited at the prospect of a mainstream animated Romeo and Juliet that I literally tracked that one for five years in anticipation. It’s not even really about whether it was any good. It exists. It’s something.
So when I heard about a sequel back in 2016 I got all excited….briefly. The sequel? is called Sherlock Gnomes. Huh? How do you do that? Are Romeo and Juliet going to be characters in a Sherlock Holmes story? At the time I hoped for a storyline that involved Romeo and Juliet going looking for characters from Shakespeare’s other works.
Well, it opens this week, so now we get to find out. All the original characters are back along with their original voice actors (including Michael Caine and Maggie Smith). What I don’t see in the IMDB page are any other Shakespeare characters, so I don’t think I’m going to get my wish.
I just can’t get my head around the universe of the movie. It appears as if all the characters have packed up and moved across town and are off an entirely new and unrelated adventure. We’ve talked a lot about Shakespeare sequels over the years, but somehow I don’t think we ever broke out of that fundamental assumption that the sequel, you know, continues the original story in some way.
Not this time! The writers here have fired up the franchise machine, dipped into ye olde public domain bin, and pulled out Sherlock Holmes. Maybe if this one is a hit (yeah, right) they can tackle Frankenstein next? Or maybe Alice in Wonderland?
But seriously, who am I kidding? If there’s a chance there’s some Shakespeare in this I’m still going to see it.
I hear the third film will be a derivative version of the famous opera La Gnohème.
kj
The fourth will be Mad Max: Beyond Thundergnome.
kj
Or that one where one of them gets left behind when the others go on vacation. What’s that one called?
Oh, yeah. Gnome Alone.
Done now.
kj