Romeo and Juliet, one of the most well-known English language plays of all time, has inspired and influenced countless stories and received countless adaptations of its own. Since the setting doesn’t really matter for telling this story, it was perhaps inevitable that someone would have the idea of reenacting it with garden gnomes, as is the case with Gnomeo & Juliet. Although the film didn’t have the smoothest development, starting life as an Elton John passion project rejected by Disney until Miramax (under the same company) greenlit it in 2006, it did see the light of day through Disney’s Touchstone label (following a distribution shuffle) in 2011 to middling reviews, but a profitable box office run that earned nearly $200 million against a $36 million budget. In the years since, I had avoided watching the film based on the somewhat negative reputation that it and its sequel had developed. When I finally watched it through a 3D Blu-ray, however, I actually found it at least a bit more entertaining than its 55% Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest.
