Baz Luhrmann's visual aesthetic is as divisive as it is fresh and inventive. Read critic reviews
William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
1996, Romance/Drama, 2h 0m
67 Reviews 250,000+ RatingsWhat to know
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Movie Info
Baz Luhrmann helped adapt this classic Shakespearean romantic tragedy for the screen, updating the setting to a post-modern city named Verona Beach. In this version, the Capulets and the Montagues are two rival gangs. Juliet (Claire Danes) is attending a costume ball thrown by her parents. Her father Fulgencio Capulet (Paul Sorvino) has arranged her marriage to the boorish Paris (Paul Rudd) as part of a strategic investment plan. Romeo attends the masked ball and he and Juliet fall in love.
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Rating: PG-13 (Some Sensuality|Contemporary Violence)
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Genre: Romance, Drama
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Original Language: English
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Director: Baz Luhrmann
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Producer: Baz Luhrmann, Gabriella Martinelli
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Writer: William Shakespeare, Craig Pearce, Baz Luhrmann
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Release Date (Theaters): wide
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Release Date (Streaming):
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Box Office (Gross USA): $46.4M
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Runtime:
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Distributor: 20th Century Fox
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Sound Mix: Dolby SR, DTS, Dolby Stereo, Surround, Dolby A, Dolby Digital
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Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)
Cast & Crew
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Critic Reviews for William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
Audience Reviews for William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
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This version of Romeo and Juliet holds up surprisingly well after so many years. The production is full of fantastic verve. Even where it is bad, it is not embarrassingly, but rather comically, so. The actors display great vitality that suits this tragedy very well.
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Despite the flashy style and some questionable casting choices, Luhrmann finds ways for a story, that everyone already knows the ending of, to resonate on a serious emotional level by the end.
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Even with my dearest Leonardo DiCaprio in it, I don't think I liked it. And I don't think Shakespeare would have been glad to see this. It was a daring but failed attempt to recreate his masterpiece.
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What do you get when you take a 4000-year-old play, which is divisive in its own right, and make a flaccid update for the MTV generation? You get "Romeo + Juliet", an embarrassing misfire from a talented cast and crew. I won't bother going over the finer plots points, since most of us have had to read it at some point in high school; I'd rather focus on the film as its own entity. Unfortunately, bad decisions are abound from the start. For example, the choice to transplant the action to present day "Verona Beach" but keep the Shakespearean language intact is a frustrating one - in my opinion, if you're doing a complete update from the ground up, have the balls to update the script in modern prose so there isn't such a disconnect. Other qualities of the film are given the half-hearted effort, from the acting (too much shouting, not enough emotional resonance) to the photography (can someone put the damn camera on a tripod so we can see what's going on?) to the editing (it feels like a wannabe "edgy" rock/punk music video), everything hoes awry. To be sure, director Baz Luhrmann has a unique visual style, and DiCaprio and Danes have both gone to solidify themselves as more-than-competent actors, but this outing is anything but competent for all involved. Skip it.
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