Romeo + Juliet

DiCaprio’s performance is excellent; his Romeo is transformed and astonished by the real thing; he has play-acted at love until now, and he hasn’t realised how vulnerable it would make him. Danes looks more mature than he does (though in fact six years younger) and she is such a smart, stylish player, even at this age. The Luhrmann R+J is a tonic and a delight.

This Romeo & Juliet is a rich visual feast, besotted with the fervor of its acrobatic camerawork and kinetic staging and its mind-bending aggregation of unrelated but resonant fragments of 20th-century iconography.

As the doomed lovers, DiCaprio and Danes -- both luminous, limpid-eyed beauties -- are allowed to deliver delicate, unpretentious performances, and their love becomes a modest, frighteningly fragile oasis amidst a tawdry saturnalia of noise and glitter.

For all of its departures, Luhrmann's largely successful reinterpretation is far from irreverent. He takes liberties with the world, but never the words of this achingly beautiful love story.

Mr. Luhrmann's frenetic hodgepodge actually amounts to a witty and sometimes successful experiment, an attempt to reinvent "Romeo and Juliet" in the hyperkinetic vocabulary of post-modern kitsch. This is headache Shakespeare, but there's method to its madness.

I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of "Romeo & Juliet" makes of Shakespeare's tragedy.

The result is embarrassing: quick cuts and shaky, hand- held camera work, bad acting and lots of attitude.

Part 2 of Baz Luhrmann's Red Curtain Trilogy: 'Romeo + Juliet'. I remember watching a little bit of this years and years back at high school and I seem to recall enjoying it a lot. I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I might've on this viewing, but it is still a film I'd recommend for sure - it's very good. I'm yet to see a bad - heck, even a just mildly good - film from Leonardo DiCaprio, which remains the case after this. It's probably the weakest performance I've seen from DiCaprio so far, though that's just through process of elimination as he's still impressive here as Romeo. Claire Danes (Juliet) merits props, also. John Leguizamo (Tybalt) is the pick of the rest of the cast, which also includes the likes of Paul Sorvino, Miriam Margolyes and Paul Rudd. Speaking of the casting, apparently 14-year-old Natalie Portman was originally cast to star alongside DiCaprio (then 21... dodgy!). I love the modern day set up and how they bring this famous tale to life in it, though I do think the choice to use Shakespearean dialogue was perhaps the wrong call. It's not like I didn't appreciate it, but it does feel a bit forced and unnatural at times - still cool that they did it, mind.

Romeo + Juliet is a free interpretation of one of Shakespeare's most famous plays. Fans of Shakespeare's work may think that Romeo + Juliet is some kind of cartoon from Baz Luhrmann. But you shouldn't immediately take the film negatively. First of all, there is a good cast, and a beautiful young DiCaprio. The transfer of the film to the American entourage of the early 90s is not badly implemented. The film well conveys the dialogue in the style of a play. And although the plot here is as predictable as possible, Romeo + Juliet is interesting to watch. In general, this is a bad movie, of course not for every viewer. Clearly an amateur. But it's Baz Luhrmann, he has almost all the movies except The Great Gatsby. If you liked his other movies, or musicals, this is the movie for you.

Yes, I have to confess that this movie moves quite quickly and is visually appealing. As with Moulin Rouge, the soundtrack and cinematography work together to create a fantastic visual experiment. The movie's concept, though, strikes me as odd and a little absurd. There are two options: either you completely adhere to Shakespeare's original plot, scenarios, etc. (which obviously wouldn't appeal to the audience it was intended to appeal to), or you perform a modern adaptation and place the story in a contemporary setting. Reading baroque dialogues from the 16th century while shootings take place and fast automobiles are on the road just looks really weird and exciting. It simply seems like an odd combination of the unquestionable status of Shakespeare with the undeniable allure of action films that doesn't actually work that well.

The old language makes this movie so exhausting to follow and ridiculous to see in a modern era. The pictures are beautiful and colorful, the sound is also great.

While I personally didn't like the book, I can still see that this was a terrible adaptation. The decision to make it take place in modern day was confusing at best, since it added nothing and the dialogue remained the same. Several important scenes were glossed over, such as everyone's reaction to the deaths of the main characters (it's not a spoiler because everybody knows it). The acting, outside of the main cast (with the exception of Mercutio) is laughable at best, and obnoxious at worst. The cinematography was notably off, too, and combined with all of the problems with the book, this movie was a pretty miserable experience overall.