Gnomeo & Juliet (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Kelly Asbury. Starring James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine.
Lazy animated version of Romeo & Juliet with all the death scrubbed out and replaced with talking garden gnomes.
Yes, Romeo has been renamed "Gnomeo" because he's a gnome. This is roughly the quality of humor you can expect during the film's painful setup, which capitalizes on every gnome-related pun and gag you can think of along with all the other low-hanging jokes of the talking-toy and romance genres. "Juliet" has no conveniently gnome-swappable syllables, so her name goes unchanged.
It's in the third act, when the filmmakers have finally become satisfied with reminding us that yes, these are gnomes, that the movie finally grows some charm. The expectations of a G-rated movie are reconciled with those of the film's tragic source material in a clever way using an amusing cameo by Patrick Stewart as William Shakespeare. The movie starts to play with clichés rather than just repeating them verbatim.
Other notable British actors, including Maggie Smith and Michael Caine, have larger roles, but they could have been replaced by local vagrants for all the challenge their parts provide.
The visuals, created by Starz Animation Toronto, leave no room for complaints. The characters give an uncanny impression of being made of hand-painted clay, and the action sequences are vibrant.
For adults, the payoff isn't worth sitting through the opening half, but kids will probably be satisfied.
Rated G for interclan warfare.
3 out of 5
I Am Number Four (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. D.J. Caruso. Starring Alex Pettyfer, Timothy Olyphant, Dianna Agron.
Utterly generic teenybopper sci-fi timewaster.
John Smith (Alex Pettyfer) is a super-powered alien completely unaffiliated with Superman who was sent to Earth as a child when his planet, which absolutely isn't Krypton, was destroyed by a race of invaders. Now he and the other seven survivors are pursued on Earth by those invaders, all while attending high school, wooing the quirky hot chick, and getting bullied by the football team.
You'd think that a movie wouldn't get the green light until it had at least one interesting or original idea to show for itself.
In an astonishing case of convergent evolution, John Smith's people are indistinguishable from Midwestern Americans except that their hands glow blue sometimes and they turn to dust the instant they die. The evil invaders look more like humans who have gone overboard with body modifications, and have a name so cheesy I'm embarrassed to even reprint it. (Okay: it's "the Mogadorians").
I Am Number Four was adapted from a novel by some of the same minds behind TV's Smallville, which should surprise no one. It's essentially a big screen clone of that series, complete with all of its copious flaws. It's a shamelessly derivative, sparkle-filled "chosen one" fantasy.
In its defense, the film's production values are high, it's reasonably well-paced, and its action scenes are exciting enough. Mindless violence is the movie's strong suit.
The ending tries to set the film up as the first chapter in a series. Please don't let this happen.
Rated PG-13 for really impractical-looking weaponry.
2.5 out of 5
