Witz Flix: Gnomeo and Juliet

(Somebody threw out their back forcing that pun in there)

I decided to watch Gnomeo & Juliet because I think I have a responsibility to the parents of America to keep them informed about the films our children are watching, and also because it's only 84 minutes long and I have STD-- uh, "Shit to Do," (so much for that abbreviation). Using my advanced powers of deduction, I've gleaned that the movie is like Romeo & Juliet, only it's about garden gnomes...I just... ::sadly shaking head:: ...alright, let's do this thing...

2 min: The Montagues and the Capulets live next door to each other in modern day suburbia. They hate each other, but the elderly man and woman apparently haven't figured out a way to not leave for work at the exact same second every day. I've avoided roommates for months while living under the same roof, which makes me think these two old people are one viewing of "Up" away from making out while crying.

4 min: Each yard has a bunch of gnomes and other figures which come to life once the people leave the house. The Montagues are the "Blues," the Capulets are the "Reds," and the children of America are apparently idiots.

5 min: Isn't it weird that they named this kid, "Gnomeo," just because he's a gnome? "We named you after a famous Shakespeare character and then made it a pun!" Isn't that basically the same thing as naming your kid "Blacula?" Almost as baffling is the fact that Gnomeo is voiced by James McAvoy.


(Not even straightforward racism is this offensive...)

6 min: The Blues have a toilet in their yard-- it's unclear if this is important to the plot, but in the neverending argument over which yard is more beautiful, I'd say the one WITHOUT A TOILET IN IT is the clear winner.

7 min: Who's gonna break Michael Caine the news that he's in GNOMEO & Juliet? Pretty sure the guy coming off The Dark Knight, Sleuth, Harry Browne, and Inception didn't mean to sign onto this project.

8 min: I still don't know who Emily Blunt is, but she's the voice for Juliet. Michael Caine voices her dad.

9 min: Gnomeo and the Blues are lawnmower racing Tybalt and the Reds. And just to let us know that not all garden gnomes are lofty British folk, some dumpy southern chick dressed like a porn star farm girl is the one who starts the race.

9:30 min: And by "dumpy southern porn star farm girl," I apparently mean, "Dolly Parton"...because she's the voice...

10 min: Gnomeo is the Rick Perry of lawnmower racing: at first he looks like he knows what he's doing, but then he's completely out of control and has zero chance of finishing first. Tybalt wins and we reach a major turning point in the film: I realize that Jason Statham is the voice of Tybalt. "Yeah, 'cause like, I want me fans to know I'm, you know, an intellectual, or whateva. It's not all kickin' an' punchin' wif me, init?"

Tybalt kicks one of the Blues and retreats to the Red Garden. The Blues freak out and say that something must be done.

11 min: "The Red Garden?? No one's ever been in there!" Hee hee hee hee hee...

12 min: This movie made 100 million dollars at the box office??? It's gonna be way easier than I thought to get "Mothello," the tale of Othello told in the hilarious world of moths, made. "King Deer?" "Catbeth?" "ANTony and BEEopatra??"



13 min: Juliet is super jazzed to go steal some flower for the Red Garden (is Shakespeare actually MORE sexual when set in the world of garden gnomes??), so she dresses up like a ninja and heads off. Gnomeo and Benvolio sneak into the Red Garden. "Great, I love going Commando," Benvolio says....I think it's important to note that this movie is going to be somebody's childhood memory.

15 min: Things go awry, but they escape from the garden. Gnomeo ends up in the other neighboring garden where Juliet is going to steal the flower. Also in the garden is...A NEW ELTON JOHN SONG?? I guess what they say about finding things in the absolutely last place you'd ever think to look is true...I'm starting to think all Elton John is doing these days is getting drunk, dressing up like Janet Reno, and pumping out shit songs for children:



17 min: The two fall into some water at which point they realize that they are a Red and a Blue and Juliet runs away.

19 min: There's a little mushroom character running around, and all I can think is, "If Gnomeo eats that, he's either gonna get a 1-Up or hiiiigh as a motherfucker!"


("Candy bars!")

23 min: Ah, shit-- am I the last person to realize this has Democrat/Republican subtext? Is it bad that the first thing I think of when people talk about "red vs. blue" is M&M's??

30 min: Extended maniacal laugh joke: still in play after all these years. Tybalt's planning revenge.

32 min: Holy shit! Hulk Hogan does the voice-over for a lawnmower commercial-- the Terrafirminator-- in the style of Powerthirst. It's a "weapon of grass destruction." It's ironic that the high point of this movie is probably the low point in Hulk Hogan's career.

35 min: Gnomeo and Juliet-- HEY! I JUST GOT IT! THAT'S THE TITLE! Anyway-- they go on a date in the abandoned neighbor's garden and stumble upon a shed.

38 min: Oh no. No no no no no no no-- this will not do. A pink lawn flamingo just popped out of the shed and is going all Robin Williams on the two gnomes. He sounds like if Scarface was forced to entertain people on a cruise ship.

40 min:

GNOMEO: This is crazy, you know that, right? All my life, I was raised to hate the Reds.
JULIET: And I was raised to hate the Blues! It will never work.
GNOMEO: Well...how do you feel about minorities?
JULIET: Hate them!
GNOMEO: ME TOO!

Some of that was real, some was just pointing out that all garden gnomes are white...

42 min: Gnomeo returns to find his mother's prized tree destroyed. She's devestated. It's like, lady, look-- at least you still have your lawn toilet! The Blues demand revenge.

43 min: I don't really wanna get into it, but there's a frog who's probably gonna bone Stephen Merchant.

44 min: Ya know what I just remembered? EVERYONE'S GONNA DIE AT THE THE END! So, that pepped me up a little.

45 min: Gnomeo goes to get revenge, but Juliet sees him and gives him that, "I'm disappointed in you," look. Or, as I've come to call it, "how M-Dash looks at me on weekdays."

46 min: Top Five People Who Should Be Made As Gnome Characters:
-Gnome Chomsky
-Gnomar Garciaparra
-Manuel Gnoriega
-Gnomer Simpson
-Hideo Gnomo

48 min: Gnomeo and Juliet meet in the abandoned garden to sort their shit out. They fight for a while and then that horrific Flamingo steps in and explains how he came to be alone in the garden via a montage of his owners getting a divorce and moving away. The truly bizarre part, though, is that they play a song over the montage which I can only describe as Elton John making up a fake Meatloaf song while wasted at a party.


("Elton did whaaaaaat!?")

49 min: "You know...other people's hate destroyed my love, and I couldn't do nothing about it. But you, you can," the Flamingo says, which, to be fair, is about as funny as any joke Robin Williams has written in the last ten years, so this other guy they got to do the voice is worth the savings.

50 min: The two decide to get married and live in the abandoned garden. They don't get the chance, though, because Benvolio sees them and freaks out, probably because he knows that if they breed, they'll give birth to a moderate.


(Speaking of which, you're telling me that Gargamel will stop at nothing to capture the Smurfs, but he has absolutely no problem with garden gnomes running around? I call bullshit.)

51 min: Benvolio runs away. Tybalt sees him and breaks off his hat, which is as much like watching a metaphorical circumcision as you think. Gnomeo fights Tybalt, but gives him mercy when he could break him. Tybalt takes the opportunity to try and break Gnomeo, but ends up launching himself in the air against a wall (classic mistake) and shatters into a bunch of pieces. It's unclear why this releases his life essence into the world when GLUE EXISTS, but that's just how it works.

54 min: Gnomeo gets knocked into the street by a human and it appears that a passing truck shatters him. Everyone cries and freaks out and heads back to the garden. BUT AS IT TURNS OUT, Gnomeo wasn't smashed, the pieces of clay they saw fell off a passing TEAPOT TRUCK, which is DEFINITELY a REAL THING!

57 min: Gnomeo's not out of the shitter yet though, because a dog grabs him and drags him away and then he has to escape and fuck my life, he ends up at a big park where, I think my eyes are bleeding, he gets scooped up by a couple kids and all I can think is:

58 min: When the fuck is David gonna ride in on his fox!?

59 min: Gnomes are a lot like the Shakers; they have strong beliefs, don't reproduce, and care a whole lot about fragile furniture. (Those of you who have been waiting to fill in "The Shakers Joke" on your Witz Pickz Bingo Boards, you're welcome).


(Ummm, did the Shakers invent the Thriller dance??)

65 min: Benvolio sneaks into the house and orders a Terrafirminator lawnmower and goes to exact revenge on the Reds for Gnomeo's death. Meanwhile, Gnomeo is in the park still, talking to the statue of William Shakespeare about his predicament. Shakespeare says that it reminds him of a story HE wrote, but fails to point out that Gnomeo was clearly named after his main character. How can Gnomeo find out about Romeo & Juliet in a movie parody of that play? I'm pretty sure Stephen Hawking wrote about this shit.

67 min: That weird Mushroom I was talking about and the Flamingo find Gnomeo and rush him back to try and stop Benvolio from hurting anyone.

72 min: The pinnacle of journalism right here: the lawnmower goes crazy and destroys both of the gardens. Gnomeo reaches Juliet right as the lawnmower attacks. Juliet was glued down so she couldn't run away anymore, so they can't flee. The lawnmower destroys the tower and they are buried. We, like the rest of the gnomes and lawn ornaments, can only watch...wait...and hope that somewhere...in that pile...they are alive. (Take THAT Tom Brokaw!)

74 min: Well. It is a dark day indeed. I thought this project had integrity, but as it turns out, Gnomeo & Juliet is nothing more than an unnecessarily satirical kid's movie. They're both alive and everyone else makes up. Given that the only real plot reference to Romeo & Juliet is the forbidden love aspect, I'm pretty convinced that the only reason this movie got made was because someone made a gnome pun.

75 min: Somewhere, this conversation happened:

WRITER: How do you feel about ending the movie with a big dance sequence?
PRODUCER: Will it be set to Elton John's Crocodile Rock?
WRITER: Of course it will.
PRODUCER: Then, I'm 100% on board.
WRITER: Excellent.
PRODUCER: How do you feel about making the movie longer so it's not 75 minutes?
WRITER: I don't see that happening...
PRODUCER: Meh, whatever. We'll get their money again with our next movie.
WRITER: Next movie?
PRODUCER: Brothel-lo. It's Othello set in a brothel with the main character played by Cee-Lo Green.
WRITER: Wow, that's gonna be really offensive.
PRODUCER: The man looks like if one of the California Raisins ate all the backup singers.
WRITER: Yikes.
PRODUCER: That guy looks like if a meatball grew up to be a pedophile.
WRITER: Eesh.
PRODUCER: Yep.




Longest. Travelocity commercial. Ever.
Witz

Witz Pickz: Best Supporting Cousin

When I agreed to see my cousin's high school production of Romeo & Juliet, I assumed I would be playing the role of Supportive Cousin. In fact, the thought crossed my mind that I might even end up nominated for a Best Supporting Cousin award, which would be great, because while I probably wouldn't win, I'd get to say those magic words that I've dreamed about ever since I was an underachieving teenager: "It's just an honor to be nominated." Unfortunately, the director (i.e. Life) decided that, while my Supportive Cousin audition was decent, I was way better suited for the role of Creepy Potential Child Molester.*

As the play approached, I received an email from my aunt, telling me that she and my uncle would not be attending the play. This, coupled with the fact that my cousin was the Assistant Stage Manager, meant that I would be a twenty-seven year old guy, going to see a group of high school strangers perform Romeo & Juliet-- and I'd be all alone. Don't worry though, as my aunt pointed out, "a lot of the audience for today's 4pm show will be students." Perfect!

Thus, I found myself, at 3:45pm, in a high school hallway, waiting to be let into an auditorium, surrounded by high school kids, some teachers, and a few scattered parents, staring at me with confused, guarded frowns. I immediately thought about my clothing-- t-shirt, jeans, jacket. A child molestor wouldn't wear a ringer-tee would he?...After a couple of genuine attempts at self-delusion, I admitted that a ringer-tee is probably the number one item a child molester WOULD wear. Dammit.

That's the real problem: the more you try to NOT look like a child molester, the more you end up looking EXACTLY like a child molester. Realizing that I was just a guy standing in a room of high school kids, I tried to play it cool. I pretended to text on my phone and realized that it looked a lot like I was taking pictures of the kids around me. I attempted to look over the crowd as if I was searching for one person in particular, but soon acknowledged that I appeared to be scanning the crowd for the special someone I intended on molesting. I even talked on the phone for a few minutes, but as I stood in the corner, every sentence I spoke probably looked like, "Pull the van around," to anyone watching.

When the auditorium doors opened, I waited until most people had gone in and then looked for the least molesty place to sit. Most of the middle seats were taken, and sitting down in the lone open seat next to a high school student was out of the question. There were plenty of seats open in the front, but that seemed like a pretty flagrant place for a pedophile to sit. Should I sit in the front simply because it was so obviously creepy and therefore I couldn't possibly be a creeper? No, better to play it safe and sit towards the back...in an open row...IN THE SHADOWS...shit. I took my seat and waited for the seats to fill in-- and fill in they did! Students and teachers continued to pour into the auditorium as 4pm approached. The middle filled up, the front filled up, and the back filled up-- except, of course for my row of ten seats, which remained COOOOMPLEEEETELY EEEEEMPTY! I was either creepy or very uncool, and neither seemed like a win.

Being alone in my row with a filled row behind me and across the aisle from me meant that I, too, had an audience. When the lights finally went down and the play started, a whole slew of new issues arose that I hadn't even considered: do I laugh at the sexual innuendos? How do I react when the teenagers kiss? Where would a not-child-molester look when the bare-chested boys and busty girls prance around on stage?** There's the problem: when you start to worry about these things, you are no longer NOT a child molester, you ARE a NOT-child-molester. The difference is subtle, but vast.

Now I know what you're thinking: "It could be worse. At least he doesn't have condoms in his jacket pocket,"...So, here's the thing about that: you know that whole thing about a butterfly flapping its wings in China and a tsunami destroys California? Well, it's like that. Remember my post on Trojan Ecstasy Condoms? After that post, I bought a pack to pass out to my friends, both to acquire multiple reactions to the product, and to further illuminate my sad sad life. My last weekend in SF, I placed two in my jacket pocket to give to Nitro and Turbo, only to fail at passing them out. The condoms then traveled to LA, San Diego, Austin, DC, Brooklyn, and finally, the 4pm high school performance of Romeo & Juliet. The tsunami had reached the shore.

I felt like I had a bomb on a plane; drugs at the border; a...Rapist Club Card in a high school auditorium. They knew. They all knew. I sat through the rest of the play, which was actually really well done, and waited for my cousin to appear at the front of the house. I realized that the longer I waited, the creepier I seemed, but that when she appeared, all would be explained and I would be vindicated. So I waited...and since I was waiting anyway, what harm was there in using the bathroom?

In elementary school, there was a short-lived, ill-advised period of time when they installed a stop light in the cafeteria to monitor noise-level. When the noise got too loud, the light would go to yellow, and then to red, which would set off a loud alarm. Every lunch, the light would inevitably turn yellow, and we would all start yelling to get the alarm to go off, which would, in turn, set off a round of cheers from all of us kids. All day at that play, the light had been yellow. Walking into that high school bathroom was like screaming at the yellow light.

The minute I walked in and discovered the under-sized urinal, I knew I'd made a mistake. The kids in the bathroom got quiet. A flood of kids walked in after me laughing, and the chatter stopped as they spotted me-- "Who's the old guy?" you could hear them think. I wanted to shout out, "Billy Madison 2!" or, "21 Jump Street, bitchessss!" but I knew they wouldn't even get the references. I finished up, washed my hands, and quickly walked out of the bathroom. The few remaining students and adults in the waiting area stared at me as I exited. I looked around, lost, not sure what to do to show that I wasn't Creepy Potential Child Molester-- that I was playing the role of Supportive Cousin. I grew flushed, started sweating, looked around desperately-- an innocent man only too aware of the circumstantial evidence against him.

That's when my cousin called my name and appeared out of the thinning crowd like the governor granting me a stay of execution. "That's right, people," I wanted to shout. "I'm not Ringer-Tee Boys Bathroom Guy, I'm WITZ! Respectable Twenty-something hugging--..." --well, just some teenage girl as far as they were concerned, but it didn't matter. The tension in the room eased, eyes were averted, and I was me again-- Supportive Cousin Witz.

"How are you?" my cousin asked.
"Great, how are you?" I replied, but what I was really thinking in my head, as she gave me a hug, and we began to chat about the play and life and being cousins was, "It's just an honor to be nominated."

High School Musical 4: Megan's Law,
Witz


*While debating how to spell molester/molestor, Jezter and I decided that Molestor sounds like a child molesting robot. As Jezter said, "Molestor: the child molesting robot. Nobody knows why Molestor was created, and even fewer know why we continue to manufacture them."

**And would a not-child molester use the word "prance"???