Amazon.com: Baz Luhrmann (Strictly Ballroom) takes a shot at reinventing Shakespeare's story of star-crossed lovers as a visual pastiche inspired by MTV imagery, Hong Kong action-picture clichés, and Luhrmann's own taste for deliberate, gaudy excess. The result is explosive chaos, both in terms of bullets and visual sensibility, which some may find impossible to stick with for more than a few minutes. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes play the leads, though not with much distinction, while Pete Postlethwaite makes a huge impression as this movie's version of Friar Laurence. The film is successful in spots, but overall its fever-dream game plan is difficult to ride out. --Tom Keogh
Fantastic Movie This is a great movie and the format is also wonderful in that you can stop the DVD and just look and listen to certain songs in the film. It's a terrific way to present a classic..
Tripe First of all, why the need to call it "William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet"? I mean, was there a danger of the public confusing it with Barbara Cartland's or Edgar Allen Poe's Romeo & Juliet? Are the producers of this piece of tripe so supercilious that they feel the viewing public wouldn't know who wrote Romeo & Juliet? Are they? Are they? As to the film itself, little more need be said about the performances (uniformly terrible), the music (annoying) and the "modern" updating (ludicrous).
I Love this Movie Amazing Actors, wonderful cinematography, this movie is a great update of Shakespeare. It keeps with the original language of the play, (which may sound suprisingly modern to some at certain points). The only thing that disapointed me was that it contains only about 1/3 of the original play, But what else can you expect in the age of A.D.D.?
Shakespeare Rocks Love this version of Romeo & Juliet. I call it "in your face Shakespeare." It is a good introduction to Shakespeare for teenagers. It shows them that the themes of older literature are still relevant today in their world.
The Foulest of Dreck Director Baz Luhrman is quite a brazen salesman, pretentiously coining the term "Red Curtain Cinema" to describe his artistic rape of several noble stories and themes. It seems that the defining cultural influences in his life were Sergio Leone Westerns, Hong Kong martial arts films, and Looney Toons cartoons. The latter influence is particularly evident; it influences his editing and even his sound effects (look at his Moulin Rouge if you doubt it). I've seen his "Romeo + Juliet" shown to impressionable high school students many times (their teachers thought that teens wouldn't appreciate the story without an anachronistic Verona Beach setting). What they fail to understand is that Shakespeare's beautiful Elizabethan English is what hinders the student's comprehension. Simply placing the story in a lurid cartoon of contemporary America doesn't help matters - particularly when actors rush through their lines, racing with the mad editor.
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