Romeo And Juliet Review

Overall Rating

Romeo And Juliet, it's about love -- of the teenage, on-first- sight, suicidal, mad variety, the kind that gets two kids wildly infatuated at a costume party, that gets them in big trouble with the folks and with the law, that drives them to, like, deadly ends. As such, Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" is the stuff rock'n'roll dreams are made on (viz. that Dire Straits song), and more than any other classic text this tale is ripe for the fast- cut, guns-blazing, MTV treatment.
1. For the most part, director Baz Luhrmann (of STRICTLY BALLROOM fame) pulls this off, with a glorious bang. The opening five minutes are an adrenaline rush -- the prologue being read out like a "60 Minutes" segment, the characters introduced to us in freeze-frames, Reservoir Dogs-style, and a plunge into the street brawl scene which fuses elements of gangster chic, matador-dancing grace and spaghetti western spoof. It all climaxes with a gas station up in flames (shades of Natural Born Killers). This sets the tone for Luhrmann's take on Shakespeare -- irreverent, campy, and great fun.
The film effectively creates an alternate universe, where Montagues wear Hawaiian shirts and Capulets black leather, where advertising billboards contain Shakespearean in-jokes ("Out Damn'd Spot" as an acne cream ad, "Rosencrantzky's" as a hot dog brand). Sometimes this is taken to the point of gimmicky cheesiness -- the guns sport prominent brand names like "Sword" and "Rapier", as a way of explaining why gangsters say things like "Put up your swords". Other times, there is an inspired aptness to the updated imagery -- Mercutio twirls a psychedelic-looking pill as he performs his "Queen Mab" speech ("She is the fairies midwife, and she comes / In shape no bigger than an agate stone"), providing a modern-day equivalent of the trippy myth-world that Shakespeare put in Mercutio's mouth.
Mercutio himself is reinvented as a dreadlocked drag queen with a psychotic edge in a captivating performance by Harold Perrineau Jr. Tybalt (John Leguizamo), comes across as a hissy, preening leather stud, perhaps leading to the interpretation of the duel between Tybalt and Mercutio as a jealous fight between two queens, butch and fem, over Romeo (as when Tybalt hisses "Thou consortest with Romeo").
As Romeo, Leonardo DiCaprio plays up the intensity level of the young lover a bit too much, with a tendency to shout his lines. The undeniable star of the show is Claire Danes -- her Juliet hits just the right note of innocence and intelligence, vulnerability and exceptional guts. There is brilliance here.
The love between Romeo and Juliet is staged with gusto and imagination. The wordless moment when Juliet and Romeo stare shyly at each other through the glass of a fish tank, and the transmogrified 'balcony' scene which has Romeo and Juliet falling into a swimming pool, are wonderful.
But the flipside of the film's obvious visual flair is a clumsiness with Shakespeare's language -- too many lines are burbled or shouted, while some are spoken with accents that are little more than ethnic caricatures. It doesn't help that the movie features a hip soundtrack (link here to a review) that is often beguiling to the point of distraction.
A graver weakness is that Luhrmann's cheeky, overblown manner fails when it attempts to portray the tragedy in the Romeo & Juliet tale. The fight scene (a turning point when the love story becomes tragic) becomes mired in cliches taken from a high-budget episode of Miami Vice. The finale, in a tomb lit with a thousand neon crosses and electric candles, tries to be kitschy and moving all at once, but doesn't quite succeed. The film also cuts out the speech with Juliet's fear-filled thoughts before she drinks her potion, thus losing a vital, touching moment (and, unforgivably, another opportunity to see Claire Danes perform).
And so this is anything but the definitive movie version of Shakespeare's play, and there are times when it just tries too hard to be hip. But still, this is a film that is full of invention, and it's fuelled by a reckless, manic energy that blazes through the Bard's sacred text and, at the best moments, illuminates it. In other words, it's a blast.