Gnomeo series

(On TV, March 2021) It takes a special kind of twisted inspiration to make a Sherlock film with garden gnome characters, but considering that Sherlock Gnomes is a sequel to Gnomeo and Juliet, inspired lunacy is expected. Moving from small-town England to London to accommodate its premise, Sherlock Gnomes reuses (some) of the previous film’s characters as a way to spin off its own Sherlock Holmes parody, investigating a mystery and confronting an antagonist along the way. It’s not exactly a top-notch animated film, but it’s pleasant and funny enough to watch. There’s a bit of Elton John magic to the soundtrack, and some of the jokes as the film gets into some Sherlockian minutiae can be somewhat amusing. (Mary J. Blige as Irene? Yes, that works.)  As weird as the side-step into action/mystery can be, it does position Sherlock Gnomes as being sufficiently different from its predecessor to avoid the impression of the same thing repeated too closely. It’s still very much playing in the idiom of late-2010s animated films (songs, jokes, action sequences), but it’s a strong formula, and one quite resistant to missteps.