Review of "Romeo + Juliet"

Romeo + Juliet

Other

From the director of Moulin Rouge...

I don't normally choose romantic movies but this was incredible. Took me a couple watchings to get used to the directing style but the film is unbelievable.

An interesting experiment in updating "Romeo & Juliet" to the modern world of decayed cities and warring gangs. It's been done before, of course ("West Side Story"), but not with the original language. As a snooty Shakespeare purist, I of course objected to some of the choices (sorry, but Juliet waking up just in time to see Romeo die is from the OPERA, not the play), but on the whole I was quite pleased.

They get super bonus points for one particularly clever joke: Friar Lawrence says that he will send his letter "post-haste"... cut to Romeo in Mantua (or whatever the film's equivalent is) receiving a letter from a FedEx-like company called "Post Haste". Beautiful, man.

I was totally disappointed. I think it's brilliant to modernize a Shakespeare classic without changing the language, and I think they did a great job. But they RUINED it for me with their moronic casting. it would have been so much better if Juliette had actually been pretty, or a decent acress...