Fancy Garden Ornament, or Cracked Porcelain?

The gnomes are back after their 2011 take on the Romeo and Juliet story, this time they bring in the world of Sherlock Holmes and Watson into their porcelain lives.

Gnomes are going missing everywhere and Sherlock Gnomes is on the hunt for the Gnomenapper across London. He bumps into Gnomeo and Juliet after the rest of the gnomes in the garden go missing and they all head off together, with Watson, to track them down.

Moriarty is the bad guy, as any Sherlock fans will know and accompanied by a couple of gargoyle dragons, the heroes have their work cut out.

Now, I loved Gnomeo & Juliet. I thought it was funny and a fantastic reworking of the Romeo and Juliet story, making it clear which bits were adapted from which bits of the original story. The problem with this is the source material. As they are using Sherlock Holmes, it feels kinda forced and hard work sometimes, almost like they could have done the film without the Sherlock character at all.

Then we have Moriarty, some kind of pie mascot who is so cartoonish, every time he’s on screen, it completely takes you away from the reality of how well designed the gnomes are in the film. The animation on the gnomes really makes you think this could have been done with real gnomes in stop motion, but Moriarty is just way too “toon-like” to be believable.

There’s also a distinct lack of adult engagement in the film. I remember the first film being filled with references for everyone, things that will go over kids heads, but this really didnt have them present.

My three year old loved it and was talking about it all the way home, but for me it just fell drastically short of it’s predecessor

2/5