What wind through yonder window breaks...

The Top 5 Bastardizations of William Shakespeare.

By now you've all no doubt seen the trailer for the much hyped Touchstone film Gnomeo and Juliet. It's a CGI wonderland of treats, I'm sure, but the bad jokes in the trailer make me think that Shakespeare, no stranger to turning over in his grave, is about to flip again.

Now I will say that Patrick Stewart's involvement in the film (as Shakespeare no less) may lend some credibility, but the English major in me is disgusted nonetheless.

So here are some of modern cultures other attempts at crushing beauty. It's a top 5 list for time constraints.

5. Hamlet (1990)
It starred Mel Gibson who turned the brooding Dane into a cocky punk who was waaaay too into his mother. It was awful. It was disturbing. But it killed a couple of class periods in high school so it had that going for it.

4. She's the Man
Starring classically trained Amanda Bynes, She's the Man tells the tale of Viola who played soccer at a girls school that cuts the team, ends up at another school playing on the boys team while pretending to be her twin brother Sebastian. She falls in love and after some craziness, ends up starting on the boys team....this was a retelling of Twelfth Night.

3. Romie-0 and Julie-8
This thing I never heard of til researching today but I bet it's terrible. Romie-0 and Julie-8 is the third animated television special made by Nelvana Limited, inspired by William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Set in the future, the two romantic leads in this version are androids who fall in love despite a taboo against their kind having such relationships.

2. Deliver us from Eva
In this masterpiece, noted thespian LL Cool J is paid to woo a troublesome young shrew of a woman named Eva who "proves to have a tart tongue and suspicious nature."
Long story short LL Cool J rides a white horse and and they live happily ever after.
This movie was allegedly an urban retelling of Taming of the Shrew.

1. Scotland, PA
Shakespeare's tragedy (We're talking about Macbeth here), originally set in Dunsinane Castle in 11th Century Scotland, is reworked as a dark comedy set in 1975, based around "Duncan's Cafe", a fast-food restaurant (wannabe McDonalds)) in the small town of Scotland, Pennsylvania in Greene Township, Pennsylvania. The director actually admitted to only reading the cliff notes of the original. They call it a comedy but the only funny thing in the film is the fact that A: It was allowed to be made and B: That no one has taken it upon themselves to eradicate all copies.
There is one redeeming scene I remember...a man gets his face put in a deep fryer.

Fin.

For those of you interested Gnomeo and Juliet (likely destined for a list like this one) is based on William Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet. Gnomeo & Juliet features two garden gnomes in forbidden love. The couple looks to find lasting happiness and avoid tragedy as they are caught in the middle of a feud between blue- and red-hatted garden gnomes.

(Descriptions from Wikipedia and personal review).