Two households, both a huge indignity...

 ...No.

Puns and Shakespeare are two of my favourite things (puns IN Shakespeare, natch, drive me wiiiiild), so theoretically I should LOVE the upcoming film Gnomeo and Juliet. And yet, it offends me deeply. I think this is a bulletpoint situation... wherein I picture the points as actual bullets shattering the piece of crap porcelain lawn figurines they are using to bastardize one of the greatest love stories of our time.

In that spirit, I give you a list of reasons this movie is an abomination:

• "Hey guys... Gnomeo and Juliet" would be medium funny in a hypothetical situation or as a one-off comic illustration or something. However, you can't just name your one character something moderately funny and base an entire film around it. See: Corky Romano in Corky Romano, Fat Bastard in the Austin Powers movies, etc. etc.

• The punny spirit of the title has taken over the marketing of the movie in general, to horrifying, cringe-worthy effect. To wit: the poster above, and also "Welcome to my pad"-A Frog. That's a real ad for the film that is on the side of a lot of double decker buses driving around the city assaulting the literate. 

• The plot is COMPLETELY changed. The families are not even Montagues and Capulets, they are Lady Blueberry and Lord Redbrick, whatever that means. And I don't think you have to be a Shakespeare dork to insist that a movie based on Romeo and Juliet needs to end in tragedy, children's film or no. LIFE LESSONS. West Side Story knows what I'm talking about.

• I am preeeetty sure they turned Mercutio into a porcelain mushroom named "Shroom". So.

My point is, you don't need to be telling Romeo and Juliet to tell a love story. Just tell me a cute story about a garden romance. This is going to be so horrific and a generation of children are going to be lulled in by the inexplicably high-profile cast (e tu, Michael Caine?) and think that this has any relation to Shakespeare's story whatsoever. Plus they will probably butcher a lot of my favourite moments... for starters, a mushroom without a face is going to deliver the Queen Mab speech.

I don't even want to THINK about the field day they're going to have with the "rose by any other name" speech.

... field day.