Pottery Bard

Cine Review: GNOMEO & JULIET IN 3D
U – 84mins – 2011
Based on the original play by: William Shakespeare
Based on an original screenplay by: John R. Smith, Rob Sprackling
Screenplay by: Kelly Ashbury, Mark Burton, Kevin Cecil, Emily Cook, Kathy Greenberg, Andy Riley, Steve Hamilton Shaw
Directed by: Kelly Ashbury
Starring the voice talents of:James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Ashley Jensen, Michael Caine, Matt Lucas, Jim Cummings, Maggie Smith, Jason Statham, Ozzy Ozbourne, Stephen Merchant, Patrick Stewart, Hulk Hogan, Richard Wilson, Dolly Parton
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The works of William Shakespeare have been recited, reimagined and repackaged incalculable times over the last 400 years, but I don't imagine anyone (who wasn't high as a kite) has ever thought it would be a legitimately prudent idea to retell the Bard's most celebrated tragic love story using garishly decorated garden ornaments! Well, they should have done, because Gnomeo & Juliet overcomes its pun-based premise to deliver a garden shed's worth of cheeky giggles and scholarly in-jokes. And y'all thought it was going to be a disaster!

Think Arthur and the Invisibles meets Toy Story and you're on the right track, as sentient gnomes from rival Stratford-upon-Avon back gardens – numbers 2B and NOT 2B (oh, where's the strike-through option when you need it?!) Verona Drive – feud over their different coloured headgear. But when blue-hatted Gnomeo (McAvoy) and red-hatted Juliet (Blunt) inadvertently fall head over fishing rods for one another, can their doomed love survive covert graffiti sabotage and high-speed lawnmower races?

It sounds as corny as a flying pig-shaped weather vane, doesn't it? I will admit that I rolled my eyes at the line “Let's kick some grass!” in the trailer, but rest assured that the army of writers (I count nine – and that's not including Bill Shakespeare as the inspiration behind this quasi-related retelling) raise their game far higher over the course of the animated escapades. Okay, so first and foremost it is a tragedy-averting kid's flick (Jensen's talking frog and Cumming's exotic flamingo being the most obvious panderers to the young demographic), but I was genuinely amused throughout, as the film's tongue stays firmly within its porcelain cheek.

The characters are cute, the set-up is audacious, the referential in-jokes are frequent (and dive into the Bard's plentiful canon – look out for Tempest Teapots and Rosencrans and Guildenstern Movers), but most importantly of all: the casting is impeccable. Parents will have a blast putting names to voices, particularly when Patrick Stewart pipes up in a cameo as a Shakespeare-shaped park monument ridiculing the notion that the age-old love story could possibly end any other way than tragically. Clearly he didn't see that this was a “U”...


In a CR@B Shell: Bright, camp and not afraid to take an acre's worth of liberties, but Gnomeo & Juliet is a surprisingly hilarious Brit-flavoured CGI comedy which will have you "cracking" up, provided you aren't expecting the RSC...
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Curry On Killing

DVD Review: IT’S A WONDERFUL AFTERLIFE
12 – 97mins – 2010
Written by: Paul Mayeda Berges, Gurinder Chadha
Directed by: Gurinder Chadha
Starring: Shabana Azmi, Goldy Notay, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Sally Hawkins, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Shaheen Khan, Ash Varrez, Adlyn Ross, Zoë Wanamaker, Jimi Mistry, Mark Addy
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Dumped by her fiancé six months ago, downtrodden Roopi Sethi (Goldy Notay) has let herself go: lacking in confidence and comfort eating to fill the void left in her life, much to the distress of her meddling, matrimony-mad mother (Shabana Azmi).

Mortified by the unsympathetic rejections her daughter receives, the widowed Mrs Sethi takes her marriage obsession to a preposterous extreme by killing off the shallow parents of her daughter’s potential suitors in all manner of Indian food related ways (suffocated by naan bread, fed curry until their stomach explodes, stabbed by kebab skewer, you get the gist).

I can thoroughly comprehend why director Gurinder Bend It Like Beckham Chadha’s latest Ealing-set cultural comedy was slaughtered by critics; watching the spirits of Mrs Sethi’s victims return to help the exasperated (and totally implausible) serial killer find love for her daughter is an abysmally wretched premise.

Futhermore, the barmy plot is totally predictable – the minute old family friend turned Detective Inspector, Raj “Googly” Murthy (Sendhil Heroes Ramamurthy), is tasked with going undercover as Roopi’s boyfriend to determine a motive for the crime the police believe she is guilty of, you just know it will lead to nuptials – and I have a real problem with the off-kilter morals of a film which so easily forgives a murderer.*

That being said, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife – from the pun in the title to a Carrie-riffing psychic hullabaloo at a wedding reception – obviously knows it is over-the-top pap, and it plays up to it with unrepentant verve. The ghostly make up looks ridiculously theatrical, the Asian influence brings a deluge of music and colour, and the star speckled cast – particularly Steve “T4” Jones cameoing as a newsreporter and Sally Hawkins as kooky spiritualist Linda – camp it up and play for laughs.

The film’s nauseating lack of refinement definitely won’t be to everyone’s taste, but how can you take a film seriously where Zoë Wanamaker chokes on a cake laced with rat poison and Mark Addy gets a pair of secateurs in the groin?


In a CR@B Shell: Bonkers, brash and naan of it makes a shred of sense, but It’s a Wonderful Afterlife falls on the spirited side of silly. Gurinder Chadha’s latest won't win over any new fans, but it's a floridly farcical distraction from reality.
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* Where’s the korma in that?! Boom boom!