Gnomeo & Juliet is, in the end, an attempt to improve on Shakespeare, while also diminishing his work significantly… At the same time, it’s occasionally quite clever in its references to various Shakespeare plays and in its throughline’s occasional detachment from Romeo and Juliet. (SPOILER… sorta) Once Shakespeare is actually on screen, it’s a given that the ending will not be the dual-suicide of the original. But, the happier ending that comes seems incomplete. I actually expected (not a spoiler, per se, but you won’t get this if you haven’t seen the film) the destruction at the end of the film to bring the two humans together as well as the feuding groups of gnomes. I also found it a little odd that somehow the new flamingo female shows up and all is well—she’s not the same flamingo as before, so for a movie that’s relying a lot on notions of romance, it blatantly forgets them here.
Still, the movie is entertaining, and kids should like it. The pace is quick enough. The character designs are nice and the voice talent is good. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s good. It does a good job of skipping along the surface of Shakespeare’s play while finding its own way around various aspects of it, i.e. the notable deaths of more than just those of the titular characters.
Flashback on my recent blog about romantic comedies, and I must mention Gnomeo & Juliet has it’s “meet cute,” and—like Romeo and Juliet—fits the romantic comedy mold fairly well, except the grand gesture bit takes the dramatic tack instead of the romantically comedic one, obviously.
Rango is a little bit Road Warrior (at least in one sequence), a couple parts Chinatown, and a whole lot of parts spaghetti western, though framed in the present day. The titular character dreams of going to Hollywood and being a famous actor, but he gets sidetracked in the town of Dirt (is there a specific (sub)genre for the whole gets sidetracked in a smalltown and it changes him forever story? There should be). He takes on the persona of Rango, impressing the locals with his tale of killing seven brothers with one bullet, and he’s quickly introduced to the town’s mayor and made sheriff.
Now, a lot of the plot is fairly simple—town doesn’t have water because someone’s been “stealing” it, there’s a seeming romance between Rango and Beans (who has a “survival tactic” tendency to freeze in place from time to time), and there’s the usual assortment of old west town characters… but, the designs for these characters are probably some of the best in, well, any animated film, multiple animal types with individual personalities and styles to them all. The film is gorgeous, like any western should be—Roger Deakins, who totally should have gotten the Oscar for cinematography last week for True Grit, is listed as cinematography consultant. The setting comes across quite real, as do the characters, and the plot plays out just fine, nothing fabulously original but slipping comfortably into a beautifully designed package…
Is it too soon to start suggesting nominees for next year’s Oscars? Actually, I saw a post from Tom O’Neil of the Los Angeles Times has already called it an “Oscar tragedy” that Johnny Depp will be overlooked for his voicework here; the Oscars don’t have a voice category and don’t nominate voicework for acting awards. So I guess it isn’t too early. Of course, there are still a lot of good animated films to be released this year: Cars 2, Rio, Puss in Boots, even a Happy Feet 2, just to name a few I’ll be seeing. Rango is on par with your average Pixar feature, so it’s definitely worthy of a nomination…
Now, to end this blog entry, I would like to wonder about something in Rango (or various other films with anthropomorphized animals): how do you pick which animals get to be the most human and which ones still come across like animals? Pigs as the work animals in Rango—I get that. But, why do they ride on birds and bats? Well, bats are creepy and it’s the bad guys riding ‘em, so I guess that makes sense, except bats are mammals, and otherwise in the film it’s mammals and reptiles that show human-like intelligence. Birds, though, are consistently less intelligent. This is a western, so it needs “horses” for the posse to ride. I get that. But, you would think that in a world where animals have human-like intelligence, they wouldn’t go around working other animals like that. Or maybe I’m just being weird.
No comments:
Post a Comment