Pretty Good

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

It's good that Romeo and Juliet is a play that keeps getting redone so that new generations can appreciate it. The language is truly beautiful and the story eternally compelling and addictive. However, in spite of some good actors, sets, and scenery, this one is quite disappointing. I agree with other reviewers who mention that much of the original text has been either cut or rewritten to no good purpose. There is time for lots of kissing but that means sacrificing some of the best poetry in the world. And yes, I agree it is a problem when Romeo is more beautiful than Juliet. But my biggest complaint is that Hailee Steinfeld just is not up to the task of Juliet. I already knew her lines or I would not have followed most of them. Steinfeld swallows words, rushes words, mumbles words. Poetry is spoken too fast or thrown away as if the actress doesn't fully understand what she is saying. I rate it 4 stars instead of 3 because Paul Giamatti, Lesley Manville, Natasha McElhone and Damian Lewis handle the language with aplomb and perform well. Douglas Booth as Romeo is not exceptional but handles the language better than poor Miss Steinfeld does. Also I rate it 4 because visually, the film is quite beautiful.

Watching this film only gives only provides me more reasons to love the 1968 Romeo And Juliet film that starred Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey.This 2013 film adaptation is definitely a poor version of the William Shakeaspere tragic play of romance.Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld,who stars as Romeo and Juliet respectively,simply lacks the passion,energy and realism as the star-crossed lovers of feuding Verona and Montague families. It was nothing to the performances of Whiting and Hussey. Too bad that the decent performances of the other stars or the so-called "adults" such as Damian Lewis,Kodi Smit-McPhee,Ed Westwick,Stellan Skarsgård and Paul Giamatti are not and will never be enough to compensate for the poor performances of the lead stars.What's worse,it also does not use the written dialogues of Shakespeare in it.Parts of it were only used.It only follows the plot of the play and the Verona setting.Nothing more.Too bad that people looking forward to this film felt cheated thus arising the controversy for false advertising.Or better yet,the film simply did not meet the standard for it lacks passion,romance,lyricism and eroticism expected from any Romeo And Juliet film.Truly disappointing.No question that the 1968 version remains the best film adaptation ever made.

After watching this latest film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet the first question that came to mind was 'did we actually need another film adaptation of this play?'In my opinion the answer is no, that Baz Luhrmanns 1996 Romeo and Juliet was enough and captured this classic love story in a way that this 2013 adaptation could not do. This film was really unnecessary and doesn't make us think of the play in a different way. It almost does this magnificent play injustice. This film adaption displayed such a beautiful tragic love story in such a straightforward, dull manner. There was nothing captivating and interesting about this version at all and that was disappointing. In this adaptation Fellows rewrites the dialogue in an attempt to modernize Shakespeare's language. The film consists of both modern day English and Shakespearean English. This then results in a disjunct between the language and the setting as the director chose to set this play in a traditional old-fashioned way. His attempt at combining Shakespearean English with modern day English is shocking and quite difficult to watch. The setting of the play is almost magical though and this partially makes up for the unusual language arrangement. The film was shot in Verona, the original setting of the play. This makes the film more realistic to watch and not to mention how breathtaking and beautiful the scenes were. The costumes along with the setting are one of the few aspects of the film that I actually liked. The costumes are elegant, beautiful and quite elaborate allowing the characters to fit right in with the traditional setting. In my opinion there has been more far too much emphasis placed on the visual aspect of this film than the actual acting itself.If you ask me the director and casting crew made a huge mistake during the casting process as the actors playing Romeo and Juliet were not suited to their roles. There was a clear lack of chemistry between the two and that is devastating to watch as this film is supposed to tell one of the greatest love stories ever written. This lack of chemistry has a lot to do with the huge age difference between Douglas Booth (Romeo) and Halie Steinfeld (Juliet). During filming Halie Steinfeld was only fifteen while Douglas Booth was nineteen years old. This age gap can make the audience feel quite uncomfortable and slightly awkward as there are quite a few intimate scenes between the pair. Even though there are constant gazes exchanged between the two and endless close-ups of them together the chemistry is just not there and no amount of editing and camera work can fix that. I may seem harsh in my critique of this film but as this is one of my favourite plays I can't help but be very critical. This adaptation just didn't live up to my expectations of what a Romeo and Juliet film should be like. The poor casting and unusual language made the film hard to watch and overall I was quite disappointed. If it wasn't for the exceptionally beautiful setting and the elegant costumes which look as though they came straight from a fairytale then this film would be a complete disaster.

Romeo and Juliet is a classic love story which every age genre has seen or heard about. Such a love story has charmed the hearts of the nation for countless years. As you can imagine, the world was ecstatic to learn that a new rendition of Romeo and Juliet would be released shortly, as was I. However, shock gradually took over as I watched this new rendition of this unbeatable love story by William Shakespeare. Nothing felt right or natural about this new adaptation. Firstly, the most important scene of the whole entire movie, being the balcony scene was more or less dismissed or thrown under the rug. This scene just blended into the rest of the movie. The dialogue portrayed by Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth was mumbled and was almost as if it was too rehearsed. There was no sense of it being natural at all. The concentration to portray Shakespeare words took over and ending up being a total disaster and a great disappointment. As the film carried on to the secret marriage scene, there was a glimpse of hope that Fellowes take on this movie would justify Shakespeare work. Once again, I was terribly disappointed. As Juliet's nanny arranges for her to be wed, we see more terrible dialogue between Romeo and Juliet, perhaps it's a blessing that most of the dialogue in this movie is cover up by all the making out in the movie. Even though the actors kiss and are affectionate towards each other there is no intimate scene in this depiction of the play. This is another aspect of Shakespeare writing which was cut by Julian Fellowes.Another element of this rendition is the beauty of the actors. Romeo should never be more beautiful than Juliet. This is seen throughout this movie and Douglas Booth takes over. Personally, I feel the film was a shambles. There is an ultimate drop of this film in comparison to the 1966 rendition of Romeo and Juliet. The only points which I feel Fellows portrayed correctly was the age of the actors. Both Romeo and Juliet fit the age of which the audience would expect them to be and also all actors were of the correct sex, Males played males and females played females. Unlike Shakespeare times where all the roles in the play were of mixed sex. Although the dialogue was mumbled and almost unclear, Shakespeare language is prevalent throughout this play. The correct language is used an is almost untouched. This aspect is one of very few which resembles the true Romeo and Juliet.As Julian Fellowes is renowned for his ability to write with such a success of Downton Abbey, his rendition of Romeo an Juliet was very disappointing and unsatisfying.