BEFORE: Well, it's been quite a week for fantasy films already, and also quite a week for mash-ups - I watched a heist movie that was also a horror film, a sci-fi movie with horror mixed in, and a fantasy film mixed with a political diatribe. So maybe it's fitting that I end the week with a mash-up of a children's animated film mixed with, umm, a literary mystery? Shakespeare meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? God only knows what I'm in for with this one, but Johnny Depp carries over from "Fantastic Beasts 2" to voice Sherlock Holmes.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Gnomeo & Juliet" (Movie #1,318)
THE PLOT: Garden gnomes Gnomeo & Juliet recruit renowned detective Sherlock Gnomes to investigate the mysterious disappearance of other garden ornaments.
AFTER: Oh, but this was dreadful to watch, I don't even know where to start. Maybe with the entire concept, which wants so badly to be just like "Toy Story", only with garden gnomes, because everybody just LOVES those things, right? Umm, no, nobody does, and if anyone does like gnomes, you need to watch out for those people, they're probably a bit off. So many rules here, like with "Toy Story", about how the ornaments can think, move and speak, but they can't talk to humans, or let humans see them move, or else their entire cover will be blown, so they have to move when nobody is watching, or wear disguises, or suddenly stand still if a human approaches, in whatever position they're in, and hope that the person doesn't notice they're in a different position that they were before.
It's maddening, and somebody put WAY too much effort in thinking about these rules, just to entertain kids, and it seems pointless because the current generation of kids probably doesn't even know what a garden gnome IS, so why should they care about them when they go missing. Really, I'd love to know how many parents had to explain to their kids why we have garden gnomes at all, when there's no valid reason for them. What purpose do they serve? Even here they're called "ornaments", which implies right there in the name that they're merely for looks and have no function. So why would kids want to watch a movie about them, unless there's also some kind of tie-in video game like Pokemon or something?
Then for the specifics of the story, a whole bunch of garden gnomes goes missing, and if they don't DO anything, then why is that even important? I feel like I'm going to unravel this whole plot just by pulling on a single thread. Sure, it's a kid's movie, and who cares? But parents are going to have to watch this one, too, and that's just not kind, to make adults watch a film that's completely devoid of any point. OK, there is one good message for the kids, that people should appreciate their partners more, whether that's romantic partners or work-partners like Holmes and Watson, and not take other people's presence in their lives for granted. I support the message, the film just gets there in a very roundabout and dumb way.
In this scenario, Gnomeo and Juliet are out of their new garden home when the rest of their family and friends get taken by something, and Sherlock and Watson happen upon the case at the very same time, what a coincidence, so they all work together to follow the clues - only Sherlock deciphers the clues and tends to shrug everyone else off with an "I'll explain later" or "There's no time to discuss the clue, we've got to hurry!" Umm, this is not such a great message for the kids, because it could have been better if all four characters had to work together, and they each had different ideas about what the clues meant, or each one brought in some bit of knowledge that would help crack the case. (See, writing for kids movies is easy, so why is Sherlock the only one here who can think of things?). They could have left him the "deductive reasoning" bits and had the other characters contribute in different ways, but they didn't.
Sherlock's weakness is that he always thinks that Professor Moriarty is behind every case, even when he's not. The Moriarty character here is very weird, it's not part of the gnome world at all, it's some strange mascot for a pie shop, and that seems very out of place. As such, what's his motivation to be evil, or to take down the gnomes, or to do anything but selling pies? That's a big disconnect - Sherlock wants to solve crimes and protect gnomes, Gnomeo and Juliet want to work in their new garden, then find their friends, but what's Moriarty all about here? It's never explained. Plus I could have sworn that was the voice of Jemaine Clement, but it wasn't. Did they hire a sound-alike when they found he wasn't available?
After this film pointed out that Watson often feels dismissed and talked-down to by Sherlock, now somebody needs to go and write an extensive story where Watson is a criminal genius, or perhaps Watson and Moriarty are the same person, and that person is so smart he can hide right under Sherlock's nose, pretending to be his assistant/partner while also gathering information he needs to trick or defeat him. Ohh, that's a great idea, but now I'll probably find out somebody did it already - sort of like how the other night I had the great idea to combine mayonnaise and BBQ sauce into one condiment (like some people do with mayonnaise and ketchup). It tasted great, only it was an odd yellow/gray color, so I have to regard it as a culinary fail - still, I was proud that I thought of it, it seemed very original. That is, until my wife searched the web and found out that the makers of "Mayo-Chup" (a horrible, terrible name, even "Ketchonnaise" would be better...) also are planning to release "Mayomust" and, you guessed it, "Mayocue". And they announced this in MARCH, so I'm about a month late with my brilliant new idea - seems about right.
I think I see the problem with "Sherlock Gnomes", it was probably much easier to do a gnome-based version of "Romeo & Juliet", because that's ONE storyline that nearly everyone already knows. But there's no ONE Sherlock Holmes story to spoof, so instead they had to do just a generic mystery story that had elements of several Conan Doyle stories, and that idea just seems doomed to fail. And without a decent story to hang its hat on, this sequel then just becomes an efficient delivery system for random Elton John songs. (He's an executive producer of this franchise, so his song catalogue is easily licensed for the screen that way.)
Also starring the voices of James McAvoy (last seen in "Atomic Blonde"), Emily Blunt (last seen in "The Girl on the Train"), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "Secret in Their Eyes"), Mary J. Blige (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Michael Caine (last seen in "Going in Style"), Maggie Smith (last seen in "The V.I.P.s"), Jamie Demetriou (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Ashley Jensen (last seen in "The Lobster"), Matt Lucas (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Julie Walters (last seen in "Mamma Mia!"), Richard Wilson, Julio Bonet, Kelly Asbury, Dan Starkey, Dexter Fletcher (last seen in "Tristan & Isolde"), James Hong (last heard in "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!"), John Stevenson, Stephen Wight, Javone Prince, and a cameo from Ozzy Osbourne (last seen in "God Bless Ozzy Osbourne").
RATING: 3 out of 10 dinosaur bones
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