Featuring the voices of Emily Blunt and James McAvoy. Rated G.

There’s an enjoyable 10-minute short lurking inside the looong 80 minutes of Gnomeo & Juliet, a routine animated effort with little reason for existence except as a way to reach kiddies with the Elton John songbook.

That last part is not too surprising, because Sir Reginald produced this exercise in animation lite that retools William Shakespeare’s famous family feud as a guerre d’amour between garden gnomes. The ongoing conflict here is between ceramic neighbours parked in front of duplexes. It must be a very quiet neighbourhood, because no one seems to notice what the feisty figurines get up to while the humans are away.

The cerulean-hued Montagues, led by stern-voiced Lady Bluebury (Maggie Smith), are forever battling the antics of the rose-tinted Capulets, headed by the malapropism-prone Lord Redbrick (Michael Caine) and hard-skinned Tybalt (Jason Statham). Things get complicated when the Lady’s lad, Gnomeo (James McAvoy), accidentally meets Redbrick’s daughter, Juliet (Emily Blunt), on neutral territory and their eyes glaze over.

Naturally, this makes the other gnomes rigid with rage. They hold lawn-mower races that make Ben-Hur look static, and the film may even be too relentlessly conflict-ridden for small children. Wee ones will also be baffled by references to other Shakespeare plays and, of all things, Brokeback Mountain. These are not quite sharp enough to amuse grownups, who will, in any case, be busy pondering how these clay critters procreated in the first place.

The first-time direction and cowriting (with eight others, not counting Billy the Shake) by Kelly Asbury—a storyboard artist on many ’toons from Disney and DreamWorks—is only so-so. Some of the character design is impressive, though, and there’s a scene with a running dog that is strikingly realistic. I did like it when someone called him “Damn Spot”.