While William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet is one of the writer's most popular works of art, the film adaptations have varied in quality over the years. Arguably one of the most infamous takes on the source would have to be the arctic seal focused Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss. Directed and entirely animated by former Disney animator Phil Nibbelink through his own independent company, the film has been heavily criticized over the years for being a poor take on the source material and has more so been cherished amongst the internet as something to poke fun at. In regards to how it was made, one can see why.
The film follows two star-crossed seals, Romeo and Juliet who fall in love in spite of the warring hatred their families face against each other. With that basic theme of love triumphing over blind sighted prejudice, the story has little to no engagement going on beyond its basic storyline. Despite a lot of tension between the two seal families against each other, there is hardly much development on either side to gain sympathy or genuine resentment towards. Even the presumably tyrannical prince elephant seal isn't fully realized enough to determine if he is a genuine threat to our leads or if he's a blubbering buffoon. To make matters worse, the attempts at comedy are annoying with Romeo's trouble making friend Mercutio, who never shuts up in his depressing attempts at yucking up the scenery. You know your characters range from annoyingly bland to downright annoying when whatever stakes that do pop up feel more like a blessing than something to feel concerned about. One has to wonder why any of the characters are seals when the whole setting could have taken place anywhere in the first place.
Now to give credit where credit is due, considering that this entire movie was made by Nibbelink himself, it is impressive how he was able to craft the whole feature from scratch. Despite some unappealing cutesy character designs and some occasionally dated compositing, the character animation is highly expressive and full of energy around the arctic environments. Even some of the color choices are appropriately chosen to fit the tonal shifts, complete with some well drawn backgrounds and creative effects animation. That being said, one can tell when the animation switches from frame by frame to rigged in the blink of an eye. Outside of that, that's where the positives end, as even the best animation can't save this snoozefest of a Shakespearre tale. On top of stereotypically generic voice acting that feels more like cartoon impressions than genuine performances, it is often painfully obvious whenever you hear stock production music throughout the background. I understand utilizing the most of your resources, but people will forgive bad visuals long before they'll forgive bad audio.
In summary, Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss fails as both an alternative take on the Shakespeare tragedy and a stand alone introduction to the material thanks to its paper thin story, cloying characters and obvious small production values. However, it might be best to acknowledge this feature as an early footnote to independent animation produced by industry veterans when we are seeing more and more personal projects coming to light. No matter how poorly made a first attempt may be in that regard, products like this are worth appreciating for the good they do in the long run.
