GNOMEO & JULIET (2011)

GNOMEO & JULIET (2011). Kelly Asbury, dir. Rob Sprackling, Andy Riley, et al., story and script. William Shakespeare credited for Romeo and Juliet play (itself based on a long poem and possibly other sources). See IMDb for very complex writing credits. UK and USA: Touchstone Pictures, Rocket Pictures et al. (prod.) / Entertainment One and Walt Disney (major dist.), 2011. Baker Bloodworth, David Furnish, and Steve Hamilton Shaw, producers. Elton John, exec. producer and some major music.

Animation fantasy featuring garden gnomes and other garden inhabitants, mostly in pottery, bringing the Romeo and Juliet story to a classic Shakespearean romantic-comic ending. Significant here for only one thing: a threatening petrol-powered, soot-spewing machine. As in the play, The Feud is a major abstract antagonist and block to the happy ending; quite unlike the play, even more than Tybalt — voiced by a properly threatening Jason Stratham — the terrifying, menacing, on-screen antagonist is the Terrafirminator, voiced by Hulk Hogan: a super-bad US-identified power mower of awesome destructiveness. More moderately powered power mowers average out approximately neutral as dangerous but entertaining vehicles for gnome drag racing.

5. DRAMA, RDE, 08/II/14