Too many fans seem to be blown away

A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is one of the strangest versions of "Romeo And Juliet" I've come across, mostly because of its setting. I'm fairly certain there have been more films based on "Romeo And Juliet" than "Hamlet". This version is set in modern times, but it doesn't feature two characters from warring families. It actually features two boys in the military who have a gay romance. Their love is forbidden because this was a time where we questioned whether or not gays should be in the military. Now, this movie does have a really good moral to it. Don't judge gays, obviously.The thing that weighs this down is how the execution is really off. It actually features the boys reciting the actual "Romeo And Juliet" play while in this romance. It's pretty awkward to watch. I can see why most people think this movie is just okay. The atmosphere isn't that good. I'll still give this movie credit for putting a new spin on such a classic tale. Since this movie was made, gays have been given complete rights in the United States and that's something I'm always glad to be behind. **1/2

Just watched Private Romeo and I gotta say I was disappointed after all the positive comments & reviews. I understood that the story was a modern take on the Romeo & Juliet story set in a boys' military academy. For me it just didn't work. I tried to get behind the "gender blind" casting, a variation on "color blind" casting in which the audience pretends NOT to notice a the actors race and just goes with the character as written. For me this didn't work because the characters adhered so loosely to the characters as written. The story is all about how two factions are brought to grief when a member of each faction kills themselves after becoming a couple. In this version, I couldn't tell the factions apart or even if there really were any. There were no parental arranged marriages, no killing of cousins in duels, and even bigger departures from the story... but that would be telling!I'm a big fan of restaging Shakespeare in other scenarios. West Side Story and Ran are great examples where "bending the Bard" actually added new and interesting aspects to an already classic tale, but this one added nothing and detracted a LOT. I saw all of my favorite speeches of the play marred and made less by this staging. Also the production values were glaringly deficient in spots. Why stage a military drill scene without bothering to ensure uniform uniforms, and with so small a number of "cadets?"This felt much less organic throughout than that Woody Allen movie where he took an already released Japanese movie and substituted his own dialogue. The boys were pretty and there were moments where the actors managed to get my interest & empathy DESPITE the total lack of any help from the vehicle they were performing in. It may well be me. There are a number of very positive reviews of this film by critics from The NY Times and The Village Voice et. al. but after seeing this I'm if some form of payola wasn't involved...

After the introductory scenes quickly showing the daily life of eight young cadets/high school students at a private military academy, there is a transition scene from reality to some kind of alternative reality. The reality is school life, including reading Romeo and Juliet in class, with each boy taking on a character and reading the character's lines out loud. The alternative reality is the acting out by the eight boys of Shakespeare's play throughout the day and the night, using the original text. Have the cadets fallen into some kind of fantasy, thinking they really are the characters from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? Or are they just acting out the play? Or are they acting out the play using the Method acting technique where the actors make themselves into the characters they play? Have they taken on the task of acting out Romeo and Juliet to give two gay lovers a chance to openly express their love? Or are they acting out Romeo and Juliet because its theme of love suppressed by family and society leading to tragic consequences is s a good symbol of modern day gay love among boys who are expected by society's authorities to be masculine and straight?The boys have the school to themselves, all the authorities and the other cadets having gone on a field exercise. So acting out the play is not going to run into the school's reality. They are free to live in their alternative reality.The transition scene happens when Hale Appleman's character recites the lines from Shakespeare's play about the tiny fairy that enters a person's mind and transports the person into a state of enchantment, infatuated love. The fairy lines are clearly a reference to psychedelic drugs, a modern reality indeed. I think the transition scene would have worked better if the entire group were sitting around taking a drug, with Hale Appleman then reciting the lines and each boy declaring that he has become possessed by a character in the play. Instead we see Hale reciting the lines to another character as they move down a staircase.At any rate, the boys proceed to act out the play, supposedly with a gay infatuation on the part of the boy playing Romeo and a boy playing Juliet.Is the gay thing really about a gay romance? Or are the boys playing Romeo and Juliet just playing the roles in the play? The kisses are passionate, the gay love apparently real. But the two characters call each Romeo and Juliet and Juliet is everywhere referred to as a woman by all the other characters. The movie makes more sense if seen as the boys being drug possessed, acting out the characters they are possessed by.Then it would make sense for two gays boys to choose the parts of Romeo and Juliet.One wonderful aspect of this movie is hearing Shakespeare's lines recited with clear articulation and energy in normal American adolescent accents. There's none of the Anglophilic obsession so common in Shakespearean acting.Another wonderful aspect is the powerful acting of Hale Apppleman. Go Hale, you need to be seen more!Overall, a very good effort to use Shakespeare effectively. There are clear influences from other movies, including the soldier scenes in Scotland from the movie 28 Days. I think the movie would have worked far better if influenced by the movie Were the World Mine where the use of a drug (a love potion) makes the transition works better, the transition from from every day external reality to another reality where one's inner potential for love is fully expressed.

Updated Shakespeare is all the rage since the days of doing Hamlet in modern dress, or the nude version. We have seen and enjoyed everything from Richard III to Coriolanus in updated fashion.A few years back we offered a course in Updated Shakespeare to English majors, and we found a growing army of updated tales on film, whether it was Much Ado about Nothing or A Midsummer Night's Dream.We even loved Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo and Juliet, and we came with some trepidation to something called Private Romeo.The premise seemed a mite strained. A few cadets at a military academy are left alone at the campus, fending for themselves while the officers and other cadets are off on maneuvers. In one class the stranded and bereft young cadets are studying Shakespeare's romantic tragedy, and they seem to begin to live it.The idea is not so far-fetched, as the original play deals with young hothead teenage gang members in rival factions. There is a secret love story interwoven among the hostilities and budding male adolescent angst.So it is in Private Romeo. The shock of the rival gangs over Romeo's love may be more palatable because the forbidden affair is with another cadet. We found the Shakespearean dialog most apt to cover the situation.The idea of first-love being misguided and overly passionate may befit a gay tale of coming out among cadets.We can forgive a small budget movie stretching its wings, and we can even forgive a half dozen cadets looking like the Glee Club, not future ROTC members. Apart from that, the story picks up steam under director Alan Brown.Scenes from R&J are cleverly woven into conversations about Romeo's unorthodox military affair. Action plays out on basketball court and chemistry lab. Like Elizabethan times, male actors play female roles like Nurse and Juliet's mother, this time in the guise of young cadets. The actors handle multiple roles and dialog is lifted from Shakespeare to meet the situation.This brave effort features Matt Doyle as Cadet Mangan and his alter ego Juliet. Doyle is soft and vulnerable, but hardly feminine or in drag. Seth Numrich plays Cadet Singleton and Romeo. They are commendable.If all male casts disturb you, you would not have been able to appreciate Shakespeare's work played by all male casts in the writer's lifetime.