Sherlock Gnomes

5 minutes into the movie, you could hear children asking their parents about what was happening?? Who & What is Sherlock? 10 minutes into movie, kids wanting to go get candy or a drink or needing to go to the restroom. Upon their return, it was a buzz of chaos from the kids, again! 1/2 way through the movie, you could tell this movie was a flop to the kids. I tried to fill my G-daughter in on who Sherlock Holmes was......and to lay the plot up to her so she could catch up from her own Popcorn break.... but, she had already lost interest and was looking around at the other kids in the theater and asking how much longer was left of the movie, so we could go bowling. Not an attention getter for kids.

I only watched this movie with the kids I was babysitting because of Johnny Depp's voice. Other than that save your money and time for a quality Disney movie.

Ah, direct sequel to Gnomeo & Juliet. And you know? I kind of waited for it. Back in 2011 I thought that Gnomeo & Juliet was pretty cute. I always loved stories about the worlds of toys and garden gnomes added nice little touch to the concept. The biggest problem with Gnomeo & Juliet was the fact that it was somewhat... boring. It was a cute little family movie with nice animation and some pretty heartwarming moments, but... it was also somewhat generic. So, while 10+ kids had a chance to fully enjoy it, parents, on the other hand, were can't help but feel sleepy from time to time. Just because, well, they've seen most of the stuff already for quite some times. Yes, garden with cute little gnomes was a nice touch, but it wasn't enough to turn the whole thing into an exciting experience. So, what I expected from sequel is to fix that problem. Because with better script Gnomeo & Juliet had a chance to become really good. So, did sequel achieve that?

Unfortunately, no. Quite the opposite, actually. Sherlock Gnomes is pretty much exactly the same thing. Which means that we've got a lot of adorable characters, we've got stars (Ozzy Osbourne returns as Fawn, while Johnny Depp voices the title character), we've got surprisingly good animation with really nice 3D, we've got soundtrack with a lot of famous songs by Sir Elton John, we've got a story with meaning for both kids and adults, we've got some heartwarming moments... BUT we didn't get anything unique. Like with Gnomeo & Juliet, you won't miss anything special if you'll skip Sherlock Gnomes. Just because a lot of other animated movies can provide pretty much the same thing with almost the same stories and meanings. So, again, garden gnomes repeated their biggest mistake. They didn't provide the real reason to pay for a ticket.

Of course, there are moments in your life when you want a family movie and don't want to re-watch the Toy Story for like a million time. And that's where this movie shines. It's something that was made exactly for such moments. To fill the gap between you re-watching Toy Story and you re-watching Despicable Me during your family animation marathon on holidays. Some scenes are actually feel like they were made with those movies in mind. It's like more of the same and that's it. So, did I enjoy Sherlock Gnomes? Yep. Does it worth going to a movie and pay for tickets? Nope. Like previous movie, this one is something you occasionally watch on Netflix. And there's no other way to it, even if it means for you to miss pretty nice 3D.

Enjoyed this but: Some of the storyline has been taken from Flushed Away, and in parts the story just doesn't work.However, if you love everything gnomes, then sit back, grab a drink and escape into a world of gnomes, gargoyles and Chinese cats!

You are left wondering exactly who 'Sherlock Gnomes (2018)' is for, other than the pun-masters who came up with its title while presumably snickering for a second and then realising they have to spend literally years to make an entire feature surrounding their wordsmith handiwork. See, it's not like any of the four year-old's this should be aimed at will get most of the 'adult' or referential humour or even know who 'Sherlock Holmes' is, much less care for his porcelain counterpart, and I'd even stretch to say that the 'potty' humour that's seen here is just too subtle to give kids a giggle, either. It simultaneously seems to aim too young and too old, failing to find its audience because of this. Where the first 'Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)' sought to bring a classic Shakespeare story to a younger audience, however successfully, this one clearly just started with a pun and spun out from there, with no real intention of adapting a proper source story or even sticking to the character in any real way. It's not too big a leap to assume the character was only chosen due to the earliest of his stories being in the public domain. The result is a mishmash of the first flick with these loosely adapted, but not really parodied, characters from a classic adult detective fiction that has no connection to either 'Romeo & Juliet' or any of the Gnome elements from the franchise. These pieces clash together and vie for attention in a bizarre way, both competing to control a film which should really be a sequel to its predecessor but can't properly be because it's not allowed to have time away from its new, essentially unrelated characters. It therefore doesn't introduce children to the 'Holmes' character through his 'Gnomes' variant, in the way that 'Gnomeo' leads nicely into 'Romeo' even though the former is a severely watered down version of the latter, but still heavily borrows an amalgamation of elements from several of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and uses them as fodder for clumsy jokes and haphazard plot elements. It's almost as if you'd need to be a proper 'Holmes' fan to even understand most of these references, and if you're a fan you probably won't like this or its representation of the character - though, you probably won't see it, to be fair. The piece also opens the world up in strange ways that make it feel closer to 'Toy Story (1995)' in the worst way possible, a bad imitation losing its identity in every way it can.

It's actually a little hard to put my finger on why I disliked this one as much as I did, for in theory it ought to be a harmless, if joyless, experience that can be watched passively, yet easily. It's not offensive, the voice-work is decent and so is the animation. There was clearly work put into the piece and the messages are important, if a little ham-fisted. On paper, it is certainly far from the worst thing I've seen. Yet, I have a distinct distaste for it. I'm not angry, tired or still cringing about it (though I was cringing pretty much every time Elton John came on in lieu of a musical score), and I wasn't totally bored while watching. I think that might just be it, though: the lack of any real response. It isn't good for anything, not even putting you to sleep. 3/10