By Emilio Frenk.
Director: John Stevenson
Cast (Voice): James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Michael Caine, Maggie Smith, Ashley Jensen, Matt Lucas, Stephen Merchant, Julie Walters, Richard Wilson, Kelly Asbury, Ozzy Osbourne, Mary J. Blige, Chiwetel Ejofor, Jamie Demetriou and Johnny Depp.
Rating: Poor.
John Stevenson, director of “Kung Fu Panda” brings “Sherlock Gnomes”, the sequel of 2011´s “Gnomeo and Juliet” and like it´s predecessor it brings unfortunate results.
The story again centers in Gnomeo (James McAvoy) and Juliet (Emily Blunt), two happily married garden gnomes who recently suffered the disappearance of their fellow garden ornaments.
They both decide to recruit Detective Sherlock Gnomes (Johnny Depp) and his associate Dr. Watson (Chiwetel Ejofor) to retrieve their friends who are being held captive.
Now both The Detective, Associate and both Gnomeo and Juliet are in a race against time before their friends fall in the wrong hands.
“Sherlock Gnomes” is a movie that like it´s predecessor you songs from Elton John, which is the most enjoyable of it. The problem is that it gets too much and I didn´t feel identified with the characters of this film.
The screenplay by Ben Zazove is very predictable and there weren´t enough elements for me as an audience to care about the characters of this film. I feel that the characters didn´t have to many motivations and most of them are annoying.
By the first act of the film you know what is going to happen and that is a huge element to alienate your audience. I didn´t see enough elements of surprise in this film and with a potential cast that it had, the filmmakers should have worked the story more.
The first film I believe is slightly superior since it´s an adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” but of course with garden gnomes. Here the characters (Gnomeo and Juliet) had a motivation and in a certain way you felt for them.
John Stevenson is a director who knows this genre pretty well. We have seen it in films like “Shrek”, which he was part of the animation department and “Kung Fu Panda”. Both films had solid stories and you feel for the characters.
I felt Stevenson´s direction was not sharp and the result is reflected in talented actors sharing their voice to empty characters.
Again the only good thing that I enjoyed were the songs by Elton John composed by Bernie Taupin that brought some humor in the film but that´s it.
I have mentioned that an element that you need to have for an animated film is both characters and humor. This didn´t have it unfortunately.
With that being said “Sherlock Gnomes” is one big disappointment. I cannot recommend it for the elements I´ve mentioned before and I hope that this is a good learning lesson for director John Stevenson.