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West Side Story (1961)

tomatometer

93

Average Rating: 8.2/10
Reviews Counted: 60
Fresh: 56 | Rotten: 4

Buoyed by Robert Wise's dazzling direction, Leonard Bernstein's score, and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, West Side Story remains perhaps the most iconic of all the Shakespeare adaptations to visit the big screen.

86

Average Rating: 8/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1

Buoyed by Robert Wise's dazzling direction, Leonard Bernstein's score, and Stephen Sondheim's lyrics, West Side Story remains perhaps the most iconic of all the Shakespeare adaptations to visit the big screen.

audience

82

liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 148,475

My Rating

Movie Info

Romeo and Juliet is updated to the tenements of New York City in this Oscar-winning musical landmark. Adapted by Ernest Lehman from the Broadway production, the movie opens with an overhead shot of Manhattan, an effect that director Robert Wise would repeat over the Alps in The Sound of Music four years later. We are introduced to two rival street gangs: the Jets, second-generation American teens, and the Sharks, Puerto Rican immigrants. When the war between the Jets and Sharks reaches a fever

Oct 20, 1998

United Artists Films

Cast

All Critics (60) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (60) | Rotten (4) | DVD (31)

Unhappily, the film shares a serious flaw in the essential conception of the show; both are founded on a phony literary analogy and on some potentially vicious pseudo-sociology.

February 18, 2009 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | Comments (5)
TIME Magazine
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Decent 1961 adaptation of the Bernstein-Robbins musical, if you can handle Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood in the leads.

February 9, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
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It is a great movie ... in parts.

April 9, 2004 Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | Comments (5)
Chicago Sun-Times
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The marvel is that the film still works so well.

February 4, 2004 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | Comment
Chicago Tribune
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What they have done with West Side Story in knocking it down and moving it from stage to screen is to reconstruct its fine material into nothing short of a cinema masterpiece.

May 20, 2003 Full Review Source: New York Times | Comment
New York Times
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West Side Story is a beautifully-mounted, impressive, emotion-ridden and violent musical which, in its stark approach to a raging social problem and realism of unfoldment

February 13, 2001 Full Review Source: Variety | Comment
Variety
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West Side Story remains one of the best musicals of all-time.

December 29, 2011 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis | Comment
Movie Metropolis

An extraordinary song and dance experience laced within a quotidian dramatic tale.

December 21, 2011 Full Review Source: Film Threat | Comment
Film Threat

A landmark screen musical that left its own indelible stamp on popular culture. [Blu-ray]

December 11, 2011 Full Review Source: Groucho Reviews | Comment

Fox's transfer of this dutiful, entertaining adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story is fraught with problems, none of which hugely damage the pleasure of watching and hearing the film.

December 5, 2011 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

it is the heat of West Side Story's social and cultural conflicts that make it a pop-culture landmark unlike any other

November 19, 2011 Full Review Source: Q Network Film Desk | Comment
Q Network Film Desk

It's impossible to begrudge the vertiginous energy and feeling that make this one of the great American musicals, and one radically told through dance.

September 16, 2011 Full Review Source: Daily Telegraph | Comment
Daily Telegraph

A good stab at 'Romeo And Juliet', if a little on the anaemic side, but it's the singing and dancing which will really get your pulse racing.

September 16, 2011 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment

This adaptation of the Broadway hit has only half the vitality of the stage show. But even that half renders it a classic.

September 16, 2011 Full Review Source: This is London | Comment
This is London

Not seen it? Time you did.

September 9, 2011 Full Review Source: Total Film | Comment
Total Film

...the film's minor deficiencies [are] generally canceled out by its pervasive atmosphere of good-natured exuberance.

August 7, 2011 Full Review Source: Reel Film Reviews | Comment
Reel Film Reviews

stands proudly alongside other musicals that retain their relevance

November 30, 2010 Full Review Source: Old School Reviews | Comment

Bernstein's music, Sondheim's lyrics and Robbins's choreography are great, but as a movie it falls short of the truly inspired cinematic musicals.

February 19, 2008 Full Review Source: Observer [UK] | Comments (2)
Observer [UK]

Leonard Bernstein's rich, eloquent and demanding score is still a powerful experience.

February 19, 2008 Full Review Source: Guardian [UK] | Comment
Guardian [UK]

Technically stunning, with dazzling choreography matching an unforgettable score.

February 19, 2008 Full Review Source: Film4 | Comment (1)
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for West Side Story

If only we could solve all our problems through interpretive dance. In this modern day adaption of Shakespeare's classic tale Romeo & Juliet, which was adapted from Ernest Lehman's broadway production, it's a singing and dancing group of gangs. There are two gangs pitted against each other in this town, first being the

January 22, 2011
CreedsDelight

Super Reviewer

Ice: Play it cool boy, real cool.

June 13, 2006
DrZeek

Super Reviewer

    1. Maria: I can kill too now because I have hate!
    – Submitted by Joseph L (2 months ago)
    1. Riff: Womb to Tomb.
    2. Tony: Birth to Earth!
    – Submitted by Breanna H (9 months ago)

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Foreign Titles

  • West Side Story Sing-Along (DE)
  • West Side Story Sing-along (UK)
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