It’s a modern day remake of one of the most classic love stories of all time, full of romance, hatred, secrets, feuds… and gnomes?

Like the title suggests, the movie “Gnomeo and Juliet” is an attempt at combining Shakespeare’s famous tragedy of Romeo and Juliet with humor and modernity. Quite honestly, it fails to do so.

Set in England, “Gnomeo and Juliet” tells the story of Gnomeo, a “blue hat,” and Juliet, a “red hat,” falling in love at first sight, but being pulled apart by their two feuding families of gnomes. The gnome families live in two adjacent gardens divided by a fence, which was put in place by two quarreling humans, Mr. Capulet and Ms. Montague.

Despite the fact that their love is forbidden, Gnomeo and Juliet secretly meet to go on dates with only Juliet’s close friend, Nanette, and a plastic flamingo named Featherstone knowing about the relationship.

Having just read Romeo and Juliet, I was anxious to see the movie and find out if it accurately depicted one of my favorite plays in a lighter and more modern way. Though, I initially doubted it would be both entertaining and successful at introducing young kids to the story.

The movie was strange in that some aspects it directly resembled parts of Shakespeare’s original play, while others were completely random. For instance, an abridged and simplified version of the famous “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo” speech was included in the movie, and many characters, such as Gnomeo, Juliet, Tybalt, Paris, and Benny (a.k.a. Benevolio), retained their names and relationships with other characters.

However, characters such as Featherstone, Tybalt’s sidekick, Fawn, and Gnomeo’s dog-like sidekick, Shroom, were very random and did not fit into the story of Romeo and Juliet at all.

Many nuances of the movie failed to parallel the play at all. For instance, throughout the movie, Gnomeo is a heroic demigod of sorts, while in “Romeo and Juliet,” Romeo is actually a sulky and overdramatic nuisance who, though respected by the town, is quite irritating.

Plus, the fact that Tybalt is killed in the movie by a lawn mower and that Gnomeo and Juliet sneak out to date, not marry, fails to depict the 16^th century society that the original play was set in. I actually kind of wish the movie was more anachronistic despite the fact that it was supposed to be a modern day depiction of the original play.

Lastly, Gnomeo and Juliet didn’t die. Yes, this should be a good thing, and yes, it would not be the best thing to have the two main characters and heroes in a children’s movie die, but wasn’t the whole point of the original play that the fight between the families had gone so far that it ultimately led to the death of a member of each family?

In the end, I felt as though there were so many aspects of the movie, between talking gnomes, humor in place of tragedy, and a twisted and inaccurate version of Romeo and Juliet that just did not fit together smoothly.