Customer Reviews

Romeo and Juliet: Sealed With a Kiss

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In my book, director Phil Nibbelink is a good guy in the world of animation, due to his involvement in two of my fondest childhood flicks, An American Tail - Fievel Goes West and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. The guy is clearly mainstream material, but the turn of the century saw him (willingly) entrenched in very questionable independent features that I'm just not a fan of. However, things began to look up in 2006, when he released his take on Shakespeare's classic romance and proved that having a one-man production crew isn't a death knell for a movie; changing cries of "this junk looks like it was done by one guy!" to a more optimistic "wow, only one guy did all this?"

Nibbelink's adaptation of Shakespeare's play is decent, arguably more true to its source material than the recent Gnomeo & Juliet. It's basically the traditional story, with a brown sea lion of the Montague herd (Daniel Trippett) falling for a white sea lion of the Capulet clan (Tricia Trippett) in the midst of a violent family feud. Nibbelink's decision to define the families by skin color kinda makes interracial relationships part of the message ("Oh, what's in a color? A fish of any other color would still smell as sweet!"), but it doesn't betray the story. The biggest alteration to the original tale is combining the characters of Tybalt and the Prince into a single manatee (voiced by the director) - a disappointing decision, but probably made because one man can only animate so many characters by himself. The story's tone is regulated by the medium, (SPOILER) so nobody ends up dying, but the tragedy and moral is represented well enough, nevertheless; Disney may have been able to pull it off better in their heyday, but in a time when feature animation has difficulty finding a middle ground between cloyingly sweet and depressingly dark (and, of course, adult-oriented Shrek humor), this one does just fine.

Additionally, since it's so rare to have a full-length cartoon be traditionally animated nowadays, "Sealed with a Kiss" stands out pretty well against its direct-to-video competition by default. Many of the backgrounds and environmental effects have been created via computer graphics, but the character animation - Phil's main strength - is almost entirely (95% or more) drawn by hand. Again, keeping in mind the constraints under which the movie was produced, these primary visuals are very good, with the characters displaying all the expression you could ask for in a 2D kids' film. The characters of Mercutio (a sea lion, played by Chip Albers) and Friar Laurence (an otter, played by Michael Toland) have been done particularly nicely, and burst with personality and physical liveliness. The background animation is generally good, too, with minimal looping of character action. The only real disappointment the visuals offer are the underwater scenes, during which it's only the digital bubbles and occasional stationary background piece letting you know that the characters are not floating through space.

The remaining tidbits compose a mixed bag of likes and extremes. The duet sung between Juliet and Romeo is pretty nice, but just about every other song - short as they all are - is forgettable. At least one scene between Mercutio and Benvolio (uncredited) is completely unnecessary to the story but still fun to watch; on the other end of the range, the second half of the movie punishes viewers with the introduction of a chorus-esque fish, played by the director's daughter, with a voice so annoying she makes Orko, Snarf, Slimer, and Scrappy-Doo sound like James Earl Jones. Oh, and prepare for kissing. Lots and lots of cutesy smooching between our lovebirds. Even the other characters comment on how overboard they go.

In the end, it all amounts to an average rating. I expected relatively little from this movie, but ended up getting a lot that was eventually watered down by storyline and stylistic shortcomings, some of them less forgivable others. At the very least, it's a decent film for the kids to enjoy, and a message to animators old and aspiring that you needn't stoop to studios to make something worth watching.

overall, a very sweet and endearing movie (with freakishly cute animation), but it tries much too hard to stay true to the original story, while pushing the Shakespere angle WAY too hard. ("To be or not to be" is uttered far too often). For those of you worried about the kiddies, don't worry, the ending isn't as dark as the original, but most children will lose interest long before then, from the pseudo-songs and irritating villain and best friend.
Rent it, or at least wait so you don't have to shell out $20+.

This is such a cute movie! My 2 and 6 year olds loved it. It kept them interested the whole time. Romeo was by far their favorite character. Would recommend to all ages! :)

This movie is like toddler crack.
They can't get enough of it.
Unlike other kid movies, however, it is not appealing to adults (or even older kids) in any real way. Since I read this entire movie was basically done by one person, I hesitate to critique it thoroughly or harshly -- because for one person it is an amazing accomplishment.
But, it is not a really good kid movie in that "the best kid shows also appeal to adults" way (aka: Flintstones, Jetsons, and just about any Pixar or Disney creation).

However, as I said, the toddlers LOVE it, and that is what is really important since it is for them.

For starters, as already mentioned, this movie was written, animated and directed by a single person. And it shows. It's not bad, but it is also obvious there isn't a full studio of animators behind it. That said, the animation is fluent enough, the backgrounds are decent and overall its still pretty good. No complaints about the voice acting either. The movie features a somewhat confusing mix of fast and slow paced scenes mixed with a couple of scenes in which some jokes are being made by one of the main characters. These latter scenes seem to have to do little with the main plot. If you are watching this with your children, be prepared to explain some of the phrases here and there. Some of the words used may be unknown to them. The story is pretty much what you might expect, except of course there is a happy ending.

There are no extra's on the dvd whatsoever, unless you count scene selection as one. Still, if you are interested in animation, this movie is definitely worth a look. Its a refreshing change from all the 3d animations that have been appearing recently. And keeping in mind there's a single man behind it, its fairly impressive. As a family film, its decent enough. Young children will probably enjoy it.

I think this movie is very fun and enchanting to watch,although there are some scenes that didn't work out too well. Romeo's friends were a little overboard with the jokes I must agree but the other characters were pleasing like Friar Lawrence(as a sea otter! Too cute!) The kissing fish was cute,too,and the animation was done wonderfully for just one man who used Flash. Now that's impressive! So overall this movie has its flaws,but in a world of 3-d animated movies nowadays,this is a great refresher for anyone who missed the wonders of 2-d animation that capivated us quite a while ago.