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I Panned <i>Romeo + Juliet</i> in 1996. Now I Think It’s One of the Best Shakespeare Adaptations

I Panned Romeo + Juliet in 1996. Now I Think It’s One of the Best Shakespeare Adaptations

Romeo and Juliet is rarely lauded as the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays, an honor that usually goes to Hamlet or Macbeth or King Lear. Yet Romeo and Juliet might be the most important Shakespeare: It’s the one almost everybody reads first, the one that entices our young, unformed selves to struggle with its language, initially so strange to modern ears. It’s a story of gang wars fueled by testosterone, love at first sight, and melodramatic, I-can’t-live-without-you double suicide, but it’s also the gateway drug to one of the richest, most resonant bodies of work in the English language. Romeo and Juliet is a crazy-beautiful play, and although there are thousands of ways to adapt it, from staid to gonzo, Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet —25 years old this week—is, among film versions, perhaps the most purely alive.

Because actors ostensibly need training and skill to navigate Shakespeare’s words , most productions of Romeo and Juliet cast performers who are older than the characters as he wrote them: Juliet is 13 (“she hath not seen the change of fourteen years,” according to her father); Romeo’s age is unspecified, but he’s thought to be around 17. Luhrmann wasn’t the first filmmaker to cast age-appropriate actors: In his 1968 adaptation, Franco Zeffirelli cast Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, 17 and 15, as the star-crossed lovers. The film became a staple of junior-high literature classes for years. (If you came of age in that era, you and your classmates probably giggled over Leonard Whiting’s naked ass.)

But the actors in Luhrmann’s version, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, aged 21 and 17 at the time of filming, are even more luminous than Zeffirelli’s gorgeously youthful duo, and in today’s context, their performances are even more touching than they were 25 years ago. The film overall has aged better than you’d think—which is to say it has hardly aged at all. Although Luhrmann and co-writer Craig Pearce had to trim the play to fit into a reasonable two-hour runtime, their script largely preserves the original language. Watching Romeo + Juliet today is to be reminded of the wonder of Shakespeare, a writer whose work is so capacious and elastic that it can enfold countless interpretations and reinventions, winning over one generation after another with ease.

Lurhmann and his longtime production and costume designer Catherine Martin (also his wife) re-envisioned the play’s Verona setting in Mexico City and Veracruz, incorporating real-life locations—like Mexico City’s extravagantly decorated Immaculate Heart of Mary Church—into the story. Guns, rather than swords and daggers, are the weapons of choice, and like many of the props and costumes used in the film, they’re adorned with vibrant Catholic iconography—a handgun decorated with a benevolent Virgin Mary makes for a particularly vivid and painful irony. The Montague gang, a bunch of blockhead yobbos who favor tropical shirts unbuttoned over bare chests, stand off against the Capulet guys, a crew of slickly dressed urban cowboys in Cuban-heeled boots, with a hatred that’s white-hot. The Capulet Tybalt ( John Leguizamo ) is a sly devil with a soul patch and twin spit-curls, a sexy hothead who’s been carrying a grudge so long he has no idea how it started.

That’s the essential tragedy of the Capulets and the Montagues: They have no idea why they’re fighting, but their warring ways mean that the union of the Montague Romeo and the Capulet Juliet is hopeless. In Luhrmann’s vision, the most affecting casualty of the gang wars between the two is Romeo’s bestie Mercutio—a loyal companion who is possibly in love with his friend—played by Harold Perrineau as a glittery-gorgeous heir to disco legend Sylvester.

Luhrmann’s film is a dizzying assemblage of fast cutting and mad camera swirls; scenes sometimes chop off abruptly, leaving you reaching out, longing for more—but even that is part of the movie’s brash, prismatic lyricism, and because of it, Perrineau’s entrance is one of the most memorable in all of 1990s cinema: He arrives on the scene—a crumbling seaside amusement park—leaping out of a convertible in a two-piece silver mini-shorts outfit and heels, wearing a white candy-floss wig, his lips a smear of red lipstick. The song that heralds his arrival is Kym Mazelle’s version of the Candi Staton hit “Young Hearts Run Free.” He’s here, he’s queer, get used to it: Perrineau’s Mercutio is a bold pirouette of freedom. His death at Tybalt’s hand—which occurs just as, in real life, a storm was brewing in Veracruz, where the scene was being shot—leaves a hole in the film. It’s a turning point that feels like a personal wound.

Read more reviews from Stephanie Zacharek

That’s just one example of the piercing immediacy of Romeo + Juliet. And the film’s array of gifted actors—some of whom are completely comfortable with Shakespearean language, others attempting it for possibly the first time—is part of its ever-unfolding delight. The late Pete Postlethwaite is both rousing and affecting as Father Laurence (his name a slight variation on the play’s Friar Laurence), an optimistic man of the cloth who hopes that the love between two young people will heal the rift between warring families. The marvelous character actor Miriam Margolyes is effervescent as Juliet’s loyal, adoring Nurse. Paul Rudd makes a beaming, squeaky-clean “Dave” Paris, the suitor Juliet’s parents (played by Paul Sorvino and Diane Venora) have chosen for her, never mind that he’s all wrong.

Because there’s only one true husband for Danes’ Juliet, and you know it from the moment the two meet, at a costume ball at the Capulets’ swanky mansion. DiCaprio’s disguised Romeo spies his Juliet from the other side of an aquarium shimmering with polychrome fish. First he sees just one coquettish eye: it’s framed by a piece of coral, like a jewel. The moment the two spot one another is so radiant with possibility it defies language. This is how a great filmed version of Shakespeare can unlock a whole world, especially for a young person who’s anxious about comprehending the language.

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DiCaprio’s Romeo—first glimpsed in a moody moment by the sea, as he writes in his journal—is practically alight with a charming, nonthreatening openness. But it’s Danes who’s most heartrending: Her features have a malleable softness. In her moment of deepest despair, her face crumples—it is one of the most naked instances of ugly-crying in the movies, and Danes raises her hand to her face almost instinctively, to shield us from Juliet’s pain, and to afford her character some privacy.

When Romeo + Juliet was first released, many critics scoffed. I was one of them—I believe I referred to the film as “garish junk” in my review. But in the days after I filed that review, I kept thinking about the movie, about those young faces—about that ugly crying, about the way Romeo comes to Juliet on the night of their wedding, after he has killed Tybalt, and how the shelves in her bedroom are lined with her childhood dolls. I found myself longing to see the film again, and so I did. The second time, I got it. The fast cutting no longer annoyed me—once I went along with the current, the movie’s rhythms made complete sense. I realized that this was not only not a bad movie; it was one of the most beautiful film versions of Shakespeare I had ever seen. I recall friends complaining that DiCaprio and Danes had no idea what they were doing, that they had no mastery over the material. But that’s exactly the point: their Romeo + Juliet is one of pure feeling, a flame burning fast and clean. Movies are neither made nor received in a vacuum, and they have a life beyond what we can initially imagine for them. That’s why so many of today’s grownups who saw Romeo + Juliet as kids will never forget it. And that is how a play lives forever, reinvented again and again across the centuries, even as its bones and its heart remain intact.

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‘romeo + juliet’: thr’s 1996 review.

On Nov. 1, 1996, 20th Century Fox unveiled Baz Luhrmann's Shakespearean adaptation in theaters.

By David Hunter

David Hunter

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On Nov. 1, 1996, 20th Century Fox unveiled Baz Luhrmann’s Shakespearean adaptation Romeo + Juliet in theaters, where it would go on to gross $147 million globally. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below:

A clever and well-executed reworking of the timeless Elizabethan tragedy, Baz Luhrmann’s follow-up to his widely admired Strictly Ballroom won’t replace other top cinematic versions of the same story (the Oscar-winning musical West Side Story , Franco Zeffirelli’s exquisite traditional take), but the young target audience of this release should find this one tough to resist.

Seeking to avoid the academic label and setting the story in a violent big city, Aussie Luhrmann and co-writer Craig Pearce use the Bard’s poesy and stay more or less faithful to the story line. “William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet” is just what it promises — a graphic, wildly passionate love story that captures the brightly burning emotions of youth.

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William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet Reviews

Despite a hip Miami backdrop, and the quarrel between the Montagues and Capulets being played out like a gang feud, the director retained the play’s original text. It works beautifully...

Full Review | Nov 7, 2023

You really get the whole Baz experience here.

Full Review | Jul 17, 2022

Luhrmann's style simply defibrillates Shakespeare's text. ... For me, it's the overblown carnality that makes it such a perfect adaptation of the source material, and that still leaps from the screen today.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 9, 2021

This glitter bomb of a film explodes the play and builds it back up again... result[ing] in a truly unforgettable cinematic experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 5, 2021

Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes are both callow and beautiful and wonderful.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2020

I enjoy Baz Luhrmann's creative take on Shakespeare.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 7, 2019

Huge credit to Danes, especially later in the film, when Juliet actively rebels. Her "marvellous much" and "I long to die" speeches are forceful and imbued with deep feeling.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2018

Romeo + Juliet is a stunningly detailed, perfectly cast, fun-fuelled immersive experience. A true love letter to one of the best movies of the nineties, this event is an absolute must for fans. Get ready for the party of the summer.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 23, 2018

Little more than a stunt.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2018

a fantastic introduction to Shakespeare for the novice and the young

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 7, 2014

Put simply: you're not likely to regard Romeo + Juliet as truly great cinema unless the song "Lovefool" stirs your soul.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 12, 2013

Look back on your first love, without it making you wince.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 14, 2013

One of the liveliest Shakespeare adaps of the past 20 years ...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 25, 2013

Luhrmann bombards us with startling images, audacious camera tricks and breathtaking action ... [in order to recreate] the overwhelming experience of adolescent love.

Full Review | Nov 22, 2010

Luhrmann would use the same techniques with better results in Moulin Rouge!

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Nov 1, 2010

[Luhrmann's] film is a little more original, and a lot more sloppy, than that suggests; despite his brusque refashioning of the text and the film's slack denouement, he manages to come up with a few sharp ideas.

Full Review | Jul 6, 2010

A slick blast of ''decadence,'' the kind of violent swank-trash music video that may make you feel like reaching for the remote control.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jul 6, 2010

A sexy, innovative and memorable sumptuous feast for eye and ear.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 3, 2008

It's a genuinely fresh take on an oft-told tale.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 3, 2008

Doesn't approach the emotional resonance of Franco Zeffirelli's immensely popular 1968 screen version.

Full Review | Jun 11, 2008

Romeo and his gang wear bright shirts and point their guns.

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet at 25: is this the best Shakespeare screen adaptation?

Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern Queensland

Disclosure statement

Daryl Sparkes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Southern Queensland provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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It is 25 years since Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann released his gloriously spectacular version of Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet , starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as the doomed lovers.

While some praised the film as “clever and well-executed” and “genuinely inventive” , others labelled it “a very bad idea” and “a monumental disaster” . How could one film be so polarising?

Lurhmann was not presenting us with a reinterpretation of the stage play, but a complete re-imagining of its universe. Gone was the sense of theatre. Gone were the long soliloquies. Gone were the 16th century costumes. Instead of Verona, Italy, we are on Verona Beach, California.

The Capulet and Montague patriarchs do business in adjacent skyscrapers while the younger generation wage a vicious war on the streets. Tattoos, gold chains, loud Hawaiian shirts, leather vests, and silver teeth adorn them. Swords are replaced with Uzis and pistols.

The soundtrack dispenses with classical strings, replaced by 90s bands such as Radiohead and Garbage. Even the “and” in the title was replaced with a + sign. In every way Lurhmann made this film scream “gangsta”. It feels dangerous.

Read more: Marx, Freud, Hitler, Mandela, Greer... Shakespeare influenced them all

Fast and loose

Many critics compared the film to Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet. While Zeffirelli’s film is visually sumptuous, it still plays it safe with the material, with few changes in tone or historical period.

Lurhmann, in contrast, plays fast and loose with every element of his production. To me, the films are in different stratospheres in their approach to the material and thus totally incomparable.

Shakespeare adaptations set in different time periods had happened before Lurhmann. As You Like It (1992) was performed in an industrial wasteland. Richard III (1995), was set in 1930s Britain; and Twelfth Night , made in the same year as Luhrmann’s film, was set in Victorian times.

However, Lurhmann didn’t just take the words and characters from the stage play and insert them into new environments. He created a completely stylised pastiche of visuals, dialogue, character and action.

It’s all quite over the top, as exemplified by the scene where a drag-queened Mercutio dances to Young Hearts Run Free . This is really Shakespeare for a specific demographic — youth. Some have argued Luhrmann’s film was beloved by attention deficit teenagers who later regarded it as “embarrassing” in adulthood . But I think this simplifies things.

I can understand why traditionalists, who didn’t mind the other adaptations set in modern times, don’t like this one. Much of the humour is pure slapstick, the acting can be over-exaggerated and lines are over-emphasised. There are large parts of the film which don’t have any dialogue at all, it’s all just visuals and music.

But the onscreen chemistry between Danes and DiCaprio is electric. Their scenes are genuinely emotionally charged, often heightened by the musical accompaniment.

And Lurhmann was making a film that would appeal to those who loved or loathed, or were indifferent, to traditional Shakespeare. A Shakespeare accessible to everyone.

This can be seen in the dialogue delivery of actors such as John Leguizamo, who plays Tybalt. As he venomously spits out, in modern gangsta rap style, lines like, “Now by the stock and honour of my kin, To strike him dead I hold it not a sin”, you actually forget you are listening to words written 500 years ago.

Read more: Shakespeare had fewer words, but doper rhymes, than rappers

My favourite scene has always been Mercutio’s death. In the minutes leading up to, during and after he dies, Lurhmann dispenses with glitz and glamour, concentrating solely on the engagement between DiCaprio, Harold Perrineau (Mercutio) and Leguizamo. This is raw, visceral acting, no exaggeration, no contrivance.

Fluid works

Some have argued making such radical changes to the text is unnecessary and harms the essence of Shakespearean drama. The nuance and poetry of Shakespeare’s language is lost in all the flash and sparkle.

But pop culture critic Tori Godfree contends that Lurhmann’s incorporation of contemporary jokes, music and pop culture into his film is exactly what Shakespeare did in the original play. Shakespeare’s works should not be treated as sacrosanct icons but as fluid works open to reconstruction and modernisation.

Read more: Friday essay: 50 shades of Shakespeare - how the Bard sexed things up

Luhrmann’s approach worked. The film grossed over ten times its $14.5 million dollar budget . No other direct Shakespeare adaptation has come close to this sort of monetary success . Others have since embraced gangsta style violence in their own Shakespeare adaptions, notably Australian director Justin Kurzel, with Macbeth , and David Michod’s The King .

Juliet as an angel, Romeo as a knight. He goes to kiss her hand.

Romeo + Juliet catapulted Luhrmann into the A-list, where he was given free reign on his next film, Moulin Rouge . Unfortunately, I think Lurhmann’s love of visual excess overwhelmed this and his further films, which were much more focused on screen imagery and design than story, character or meaning.

Perhaps the difference with Romeo + Juliet is that Luhrmann had a great script to start with. One can justly say of this lush, loud film, “For I never saw true beauty till this night”.

Romeo + Juliet is being re-released in selected cinemas from February 11 to mark its 25th anniversary.

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Romeo + Juliet

Shakespeare's famous play is updated to the hip modern suburb of Verona still retaining its original dialogue. Shakespeare's famous play is updated to the hip modern suburb of Verona still retaining its original dialogue. Shakespeare's famous play is updated to the hip modern suburb of Verona still retaining its original dialogue.

Baz Luhrmann
William Shakespeare
Craig Pearce
Leonardo DiCaprio
Claire Danes
John Leguizamo
634 User reviews
86 Critic reviews
60 Metascore
15 wins & 30 nominations total

Top cast 41

Attractive Girl

Father Laurence

Fulgencio Capulet

Ted Montague

Captain Prince
Middle Age Occupant

Station Mother

All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia Key hair stylist Aldo Signoretti was kidnapped by gang members and held for $300 ransom which Baz Luhrmann paid.
Goofs At the gas station showdown, a boom mic is reflected in a car window as the camera moves past it.

Romeo : [upon first sight of Juliet] Did my heart love 'til now? Forswear its sight. For I never saw true beauty 'til this night.

Crazy credits The film opens and closes with the Chorus, appearing as an anchorwoman on a TV screen, narrating the prologue and the closing lines.
Connections Edited into Nothing Is Truer Than Truth (2018)
Soundtracks #1 Crush Performed, Written and Produced by Garbage Garbage appears courtesy of Almo Sounds, Inc./Mushroom Records UK Ltd. Shirley Manson appears courtesy of Radioactive Records

User reviews 634

Feb 14, 2020
How long is Romeo + Juliet? Powered by Alexa
November 1, 1996 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
Romeo + Julieta
Chapultepec Castle, Chapultepec Park, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico
Bazmark Films
Estudios Churubusco Azteca S.A.
Twentieth Century Fox
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$14,500,000 (estimated)
$46,351,345
$11,133,231
Nov 3, 1996
$147,554,998

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours

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Baz Luhrmann, Romeo and Juliet 1996

Read a review and overview of Baz Luhrmann’s classic Romeo and Juliet 1996.

Romeo and Juliet is arguably the classic romantic story of all time, so it’s little wonder that Shakespeare’s play has been reproduced on the silver screen so many times. In 1996 Baz Luhrmann’s version was released to great critical acclaim, grossing close to $150 million, and receiving nominations for a host of awards around the world.

Romeo and Juliet movie starring Claire Danes and Leonardo Di Caprio in Baz Luhrmanns 1996 version

Claire Danes and Leonardo Di Caprio in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo and Juliet movie

Although Lurmann’s Romeo and Juliet is the familiar timeless story of the ‘star crossed’ lovers it’s updated to a modern Veronese suburb – Verona Beach – where the teenage members of the Montague and Capulet families carry guns, and when the trouble starts they shoot at each other without restraint. The film retains the original Shakespeare dialogue, but the text is pruned and the story is told mainly through vivid and exciting cinematic images.

Shakespeare’s plays have a timeless quality and have been comfortably interpreted by four hundred years of producers and actors to present them as relevant to their time and the fashions of the time. This film loses nothing of the play’s integrity while catering for the modern teenager’s taste for fast-moving, spectacular visual and musical effects. The music is loud and the camerawork offers what the most popular action thrillers do, driving the audience through the story, hurtling the ill-fated lovers towards their doom.

Luhrmann has created a world in which the extreme wealth of the two families is evident in the pastimes, dress, and lifestyle of their younger generation. They wear expensive outfits, drive fancy sports cars and wield big shiny guns. The fight at the beginning of the play becomes a spectacular gunfight at a petrol station and the party at the Capulet mansion is a sumptuous rock-star style bash. Deafening pop music plays throughout.

The difficulty Luhrmann has to confront is the need to marry his cinematic vision with the language of Shakespeare, and he does this admirably. The key is the convincing way in which the actors speak the lines. Shakespeare’s blank verse iambic pentameter was written as a way of imitating the rhythms of natural speech and all of the actors exploit that quality in the poetry to create that effect. DiCaprio, who has gone on to become a major film star, shows that early promise in this movie. He has an instinctive grace and creates a Romeo whose gut-wrenching emotion is entirely convincing. Danes’ yearning Juliet is exactly right for a strong determined young girl caught up in this powerful emotional swirl. Paul Sorvino as Capulet presents a convincing modern tycoon who can’t understand any form of dissent from his authority and Pete Postlethwaite’s hippy guru, Friar Laurence , is a joy.

Anyone coming to Shakespeare for the first time will enjoy this film, but there is an extra dimension of enjoyment for those who know the play. Some of the character motivations are obscured by Luhrmann’s desire to realise his cinematic vision but knowledge of the play would make everything clear. This movie is a rich addition to the canon of Romeo and Juliet films .

Romeo and Juliet 1996 Cast

The montagues:.

Brian Dennehy as Ted Montague, Romeo’s fathe
Christina Pickles as Caroline Montague, Romeo’s mother
Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo Montague
Dash Mihok as Benvolio Montague, Romeo’s cousin
Jesse Bradford as Balthasar Montague, Romeo’s cousin
Zak Orth as Gregory Montague, Romeo’s cousin
Jamie Kennedy as Sampson Montague, Romeo’s cousin

The Capulets:

Paul Sorvino as Fulgencio Capulet, Juliet’s father
Diane Venora as Gloria Capulet, Juliet’s mother
Claire Danes as Juliet Capulet
John Leguizamo as Tybalt Capulet, Juliet’s cousin
Vincent Laresca as Abra Capulet, Juliet’s cousin
Carlos Martín Manzo Otálora as Petruchio Capulet, Juliet’s cousin
Miriam Margolyes as Nurse, Juliet’s nanny

Romeo and Juliet 1996 Playlist

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Why Romeo + Juliet is an enduring cultural classic

As Baz Luhrmann’s provocative Shakespeare adaptation celebrates its 25th anniversary, we reflect on the movie’s lasting legacy

Presenting the Best Supporting Actress category at this year’s Academy Awards, Brad Pitt was tasked with explaining how each nominee fell in love with movies. "For Amanda Seyfried, it was the film version of Romeo + Juliet . The Leo [DiCaprio] version," he read, cheekily adding, "Amanda, me too" to warm chuckles from the crowd.

Two months later, for the second series of Feel Good , the show’s creator Mae Martin paid homage to the film’s iconic meet-cute, dressing up as DiCaprio’s knight in shining armour while Des’ree’s soothing ballad ‘Kissing You’ plays on the soundtrack. And just a few weeks ago, Rachel Zegler (the star of Steven Spielberg’s upcoming West Side Story remake) tweeted a picture of herself smiling sweetly in Juliet’s angel wings.

Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet , which turns 25 this month, was a cultural reset before the term was popularised, indelibly printing its stamp on our collective imaginations. Referenced in Halloween costumes and Euphoria episodes to this day, his fizzing, sparking, pistol-toting adaptation blazed across our screens and blasted the dust off Shakespeare.

This outré, punk approach to the 16th-century tragedy was largely met with critical derision in 1996. In his two-star review, the film journalist Roger Ebert sniffed that “this production was a very bad idea” and it would “dismay any lover of Shakespeare”. He is entitled to his opinion, of course, but I’d venture that this version was not intended for him (and, indeed, the fact that the movie went on to snag the number-one spot at the US box office upon release proves that it carried plenty of appeal to other audiences).

Luhrmann translates Romeo & Juliet for the MTV generation and updates its outmoded iconography, thereby giving himself space to situate the 400-year-old play firmly in the here and now. He creates an eye-popping, neon-washed world where swords become guns, prologists become TV newsreaders and messengers are Fedex delivery drivers. The otherwise tricky Elizabethan dialogue is never an impediment to understanding because the director visualises the action so meticulously from the outset, denoting the characters and their relationships to one another with on-screen text, and doubling back to deliver the opening sonnet more slowly for a second time to ensure we have fully grasped the story beats before launching us into the narrative.

Romeo + Juliet is fresh, it’s original, it’s alive . Edited with the frantic energy of a sugar-high toddler, it zips along at adrenalin-jolting speed, stopping off to observe drug-fuelled drag performances and frenzied car chases, petrol-station gun fights and rowdy snooker games. It is a sensory overload of a movie from a film-maker now renowned for such excess – Luhrmann’s follow-up to R+J would be the similarly go-for-broke Moulin Rouge . And yet, the director always knows exactly when to relent his barrelling dynamism. This is, above all, a retelling of the most famous love story ever written, and the film takes care to quieten the noise and slow the pace during Romeo and Juliet’s scenes together.

As the star-crossed lovers, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes have a smouldering romantic chemistry palpable enough to make any viewer weak at the knees. He looks at her with complete, open-faced adoration and she returns his gaze with shy, pink-cheeked delight. For all the choral Prince covers and billowing Hawaiian shirts, R+J never loses sight of the steadfast passion that drives it and, unlike today’s all but neutered Hollywood movies, possesses an undeniable sexual potency. Desire bounces off the screen in the film, whether it’s Juliet curling her fingers through her husband’s rain-soaked hair or Romeo emerging from an inadvertent swim proposing marriage (that Leo is soaking wet during both these sequences speaks for itself).

The two most pastiched moments in the film – when the lovers steal glimpses of each other through a tropical-fish tank and, later, confirm their relationship status in the Capulet pool – are memorable not only for their daring reinvention of the original (inverting the blocking of the balcony scene is a stroke of genius), but also for how they let us experience the heart-thumping whirlwind of love at first sight. I’ve seen enough limp Romeo & Juliet adaptations to know that this emotional intelligence is a rare commodity.

For me, and the legions of other teenage girls who first saw the film in English class, Romeo + Juliet was quite simply a revelation, an earth-shattering bolt from the blue. It was my defining text at age 13, when I would wake up every day to its soundtrack floating from my alarm clock, wear a spaghetti-strapped cotton dress for weeks on end and, one time, was even wheeled out by the headmaster to quote huge chunks of the play to the school’s Ofsted inspector (which I knew off by heart from my looping viewings of the film). Until that point, I’d never seen a movie like this. It was a volcanic eruption of colour and verve that rewarded me with new nuggets of detail on each rewatch.

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention the primal draw of Romeo + Juliet : one baby-faced Leonardo DiCaprio. The film fully understands its star’s allure. It’s no coincidence that Luhrmann introduces Leo by gliding the camera up his entire body inch by inch while he sits in his oversize Prada suit, writing and smoking in true softboy fashion, backlit by the rising sun that illuminates each individual strand of his golden hair. Shakespeare wrote that Romeo’s “face be better than any man’s” and I like to think he was referring specifically to DiCaprio. Leo leans into his cherubic beauty for the role – which he has been downplaying ever since this short-lived romantic-hero phase of his career – emphasising the awkwardness of his gangly physicality and infusing Romeo with the skittish energy of lovesick youth. Within a filmography of astonishingly realised performances, this is an early standout; we see him transform clumsy impulsivity into mature, ironclad resolve over the course of the movie. It is exquisite to behold.

What makes Romeo + Juliet stand the test of time is that all of its bold artistic choices are in service of a singular creative vision. Luhrmann does not treat the Shakespeare masterwork as a sacred, inert text. Instead – as he recently said on Instagram , where he’s been sharing behind-the-scenes featurettes on the movie – the director “continued to invent and improve” throughout the adaptation process, and remained in “a constant [state of] invention and reinvention”. This glitter bomb of a film explodes the play and builds it back up again with additions and inversions, restaging and reframing that, together, result in a truly unforgettable cinematic experience. In another 25 years, I have no doubt that we’ll cherish Romeo + Juliet just as strongly.

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FILM REVIEW

Soft! What Light? It's Flash, Romeo

By Janet Maslin

Nov. 1, 1996

WHILE Shakespeare spins, the madly flamboyant film maker Baz Luhrmann (''Strictly Ballroom'') invents a whole new vocabulary for a story of star-crossed young love. It calls for pink hair, screaming billboards, tabloid television stories, music-video editing and a little hot dog shack called Rosencrantzky's on Verona Beach. Wherefore art thou? A good question, and not just for Romeo. Why bury ''Romeo and Juliet'' amid all this creative ferment? Where is the audience willing to watch a classic play thrown in the path of a subway train?

''I liked the original better: Franco Zeffirelli's,'' said a man behind me leaving a screening of the euphemistically titled ''William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.'' Maybe so, but Mr. Zeffirelli's lush, traditional 1968 film was made in, and for, another world. 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.

So Romeo and Juliet, meet Tommy. And brace yourselves for the Ken Russell treatment that Mr. Luhrmann uses to pummel this text. Drawing on a wild cavalcade of pop iconography, he tries a fascinating array of tricks, with results that are guaranteed to be uneven. This risky gambit collapses whenever the film becomes too shrill or runs out of new whimsy. Even at its startling best, it's as exhausting as it is bold.

The biggest inconsistency to Mr. Luhrmann's approach involves the language of the play, which is treated as sacrosanct when everything else about the film reflects radical revisionism.

In such an otherwise irreverent context, this amounts to undue pretension, since so much of the dialogue is lost and upstaged anyhow. Fortunately, this film's young lovers, played radiantly by Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, have the requisite magic and speak their lines with passionate conviction. They remain rapt and earnest even when some of the film's frantic minor players might as well be speaking in tongues.

With an opening sequence edited in the high-voltage style of a movie trailer, this ''Romeo and Juliet'' does not initially promise much in the way of sincerity. As he introduces the Capulets and the Montagues as two warring Florida street gangs, screaming threats and driving cars with vanity plates (''CAP 005''), Mr. Luhrmann starts the film at full fever pitch. He hurls the audience into a world where clothes, graffiti, signs and billboards become Shakespearean artifacts with a touch of camp. Catherine Martin's gaudy, spectacular production design is high drama in its own right.

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Romeo + Juliet (United States, 1996)

In Looking for Richard , actor/director Al Pacino expresses his great hope for his film -- to extend his enthusiasm for the Bard's plays to a broader audience. In a very different way, that's what Baz Luhrmann ( Strictly Ballroom ) is attempting to do with this radical approach to "Romeo and Juliet". Luhrmann hasn't fashioned this motion picture with the stodgy, elitist Shakespeare "purist" in mind. Instead, by incorporating lively, modern imagery with a throbbing rock soundtrack and hip actors, he has taken aim at an audience that would normally regard Shakespeare as a chore to be endured in school, not a passionate drama to ignite the screen.

Make no mistake, this Romeo and Juliet isn't the match of Franco Zeffirelli's unforgettable 1968 classic. While Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes make an effective couple, their romance doesn't burn with the white-hot intensity of Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey's. Nevertheless, this interpretation is so fundamentally different from anything to have come before it that there's no danger of repetition. By the same token, there have been two different "Richard III"s in the past twelve months, and no one is complaining.

For those who aren't aware, "Romeo and Juliet" tells the tale of two "star-cross'd" teenage lovers who secretly fall for each other and marry. Their families, the Montagues and Capulets, have been fierce enemies for decades, and, even as Romeo and Juliet say their wedding vows, new violence breaks out between the clans. In the end, their love is doomed. When Romeo mistakenly believes Juliet is dead, he poisons himself. And, when Juliet discovers that he is dead, she too commits suicide.

Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet (properly titled William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet ) takes the play and deposits it in a modern Verona Beach that is part decaying Miami and part Mexico City. By the director's own admission, this is a created world, borrowing aspects of its unique visual style from such diverse periods as the 1940s, 1970s, and 1990s, and using a variety of classic films (most notably Rebel Without a Cause ) for inspiration. Fast cars with roaring engines replace horses. Guns stand in for swords and daggers. The resulting hybrid background is startling.

Romeo and Juliet 's camera is restless, always moving. There are times when the rapid cuts and raging soundtrack might cause understandable confusion between the movie and a rock video. Indeed, with all the camera tricks, special effects (such as a roiling storm), and riotous splashes of color, it's easy to lose the story in the style. Luhrmann's intent was never to drown Shakespeare's dialogue in technique, but it happens, especially early in the film. In the process, the more subtle intangibles of the romance are irretrievably lost.

The movie settles down when Romeo (DiCaprio) and Juliet (Danes) first come face-to-face, gazing at each other through the transparent panes of an aquarium while a love ballad plays in the background. It's a delicately romantic moment whose magic is never quite matched by any other scene in the film. Danes makes a breathtaking Juliet, merging strength and fragility into one. DiCaprio isn't quite as successful as Romeo; there are times when his delivery of Shakespeare's dialogue sounds forced, and, on at least one occasion (when he learns about Juliet's supposed death), he goes way over-the-top.

The supporting cast has its share of successes and failures. John Leguizamo plays a particularly effective Tybalt, Juliet's Latino cousin. Despite a terrible accent, Miriam Margolyes gives a delightful interpretation of Juliet's nurse. In a daring move that works, Harold Perrineau's Mercutio is presented as a high-energy drag queen who gets a chance to strut his stuff to a disco tune with Shakespearean lyrics. Pete Postlethwaite (as Father Laurence) and Vondie Curtis-Hall (Captain Prince) are both at ease in their roles. Brian Dennehy's presence is, as always, imposing, but, as Lord Montague, he doesn't have more than a handful of lines. Less successful are Paul Sorvino's cartoon-like portrayal of Lord Capulet and Diane Verona's Blanche DuBois-flavored version of his wife. And a pair of characters, Paul Rudd's Paris and Jesse Bradford's Balthasar, are so ineffectual that they're virtually invisible.

There are moments of comedy in Shakespeare's play, and Luhrmann tries to transfer some of these over, in addition to adding a few of his own. One in particular, with Romeo ineptly scaling a trellis for the famous balcony sequence, is ill-placed. Also, there are times when the director gets a little too cute. A run-down theater in Verona is called "The Globe" (the name of the locale where Shakespeare's plays were originally performed), and the astute viewer will catch visual references to "The Merchant of Verona Beach", "Rozencranzky's", "Wherefore L'Amour", and "Out, Out Damn Spot Cleaners".

Ultimately, no matter how many innovative and unconventional flourishes it applies, the success of any adaptation of a Shakespeare play is determined by two factors: the competence of the director and the ability of the main cast members. Luhrmann, Danes, and DiCaprio place this Romeo and Juliet in capable hands. And, while such a loud, brash interpretation may not go down in cinematic history as the definitive version of the play, hopefully it will open a few eyes and widen the audience willing to venture into any movie bearing the credit "based on the play by William Shakespeare."

Now, bring on Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet ...

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Every romeo & juliet movie ranked from worst to best.

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Romeo and Juliet has been brought to the screen in a variety of different ways, but how do its traditional adaptations rank from worst to best? Shakespeare's most famous play with the possible exception of Hamlet , Romeo and Juliet tells the story of two star-crossed lovers from conflicted families whose tragic deaths ultimately restore peace. Reportedly premiering in 1597, the story has stood the test of time and transcended into archetype, with the pairing of the titular character's names becoming synonymous with the greatest lovers of all time.

The play's journey to the big screen began in 1936, with a George Cukor-directed MGM production that, despite its miscast leads, showed that the story's inherent power wasn't lost in the translation between mediums. Since that time, nearly every generation has received some take on the classic tale, from Franco Zeffirelli's iconically sensual 1968 production to Baz Lurhmann's flashy, modernized 1996 take starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. There have, of course, been various other updates of the tale for the screen, including but not limited to the Jet Li vehicle Romeo Must Die , the zombie rom-com Warm Bodies , and the classic musical West Side Story.

Related: Romeo + Juliet 1996 Cast & Character Guide

This list, however, will focus only on the adaptations of the play that hew most closely to Shakespeare's original text. That means no zombies, no Sharks, and no Jets. The 1996 Baz Lurhmann movie turns 25 this year, so it seems as good a time as any to look back on how these films rank from worst to best.

4. Romeo & Juliet (2013)

romeo and juliet 2013 hailee steinfeld douglas booth

Every generation seemingly gets their Romeo and Juliet , but this adaptation by Downton Abbey scribe Julian Fellowes barely gets the blood pumping. Lavishly produced, with sumptuous costumes and gorgeous location work in Verona and Mantua, the emphasis on ornate visuals all too often buries the doomed romance at the film's center. It doesn't help that Hailee Steinfeld, so stellar elsewhere, including her Oscar-nominated turn in True Grit just three years prior, seems out of her depth as Juliet. Douglas Booth's Romeo is dreamy enough, but his monotonous delivery never makes Shakespeare's language sing. The adults fare far better, with particularly great turns from Lesley Manville as Juliet's Nurse and Damian Lewis as the controlling Lord Capulet, and a scene-stealing performance from Paul Giamatti as Friar Laurence. Overall, though, this is a rather bland, surface-level adaptation of the Bard's most famous work, with even the swordfights coming off as rote and formulaic.

3. Romeo and Juliet (1936)

Directed by Philadelphia Story and My Fair Lady helmer George Cukor, this 1936 adaptation is as Old Hollywood a treatment the play ever got. Produced by MGM , the film is stately to a fault, and one can feel Cukor's hesitance to break the mold of what's thought of as a traditional take on Shakespeare. That might all be fine, but the casting nearly does the film in, with the 40-something Leslie Howard and 30-something Norma Shearer completely incapable of accessing the frenzied rush of young love that gives the source material its heat and tragedy. Elsewhere, an elderly John Barrymore hams it up as Mercutio and Basil Rathbone offers up a peculiarly buttoned-up Tybalt. The surrounding production only serves to date the film more, although it is interesting to watch purely as an early cinematic take on Shakespeare's work, particularly before Laurence Olivier started showing Hollywood how it's really done.

2. Romeo + Juliet (1996)

As polarizing as any film Baz Luhrmann ever made, Romeo + Juliet famously modernizes the Bard's play, setting it on Verona Beach and transforming the conflict between the Montagues and Capulets into a full-blown mafia war. The film's frantic, MTV style is sure to alienate many, but it also serves to create one of the only truly successful films at capturing the full muscularity of Shakespeare's writing. Luhrmann's operatic sensibility, which swings from low comedy to high romance at the drop of a hat, is a perfect match for a playwright who was as adept at capturing the breathless infatuation of true love as entertaining the drunken groundlings who sat in the front row. The spirit of Shakespeare is what Baz is after here, and thus a transposition of Mercutio's Queen Mab speech into a drag queen performance of "Young Hearts Run Free" feels totally fair game. Sure, he could ease up on the machine gun-style editing, and some of the more "clever" additions, like guns branded "Sword" or a delivery company called "Post Haste," read more cutesy than necessary. However, Lurhmann also knows when to slow things down and rely on his performers. Leonardo DiCaprio was still a year out from playing Jack in Titanic , but his heartthrob status began with his dreamy, impassioned performance here as Romeo, and Claire Danes is one of the finest screen Juliets to ever take the role. Their meeting through a fish tank, scored by Des'ree's "Kissing You," is one of cinema's most heart-stopping love-at-first-sight moments, and their dynamite chemistry grounds the film right through to its shatteringly tragic finale.

Related: Romeo + Juliet's Hair Stylist Was Kidnapped During the Shoot (Really)

1. Romeo and Juliet (1968)

It's difficult to imagine there will ever be a more definitive film version of Shakespeare's most celebrated play than this 1968 version. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring inspired amateurs Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, this simple but effective production is Romeo and Juliet at its most pure and essential. The freshness of Hussey and Whiting, so close to the actual ages of their characters, translates to the most primal depiction of the lovers' breathless teenage fling as the screen has ever seen. The balcony scene, which sees Hussey practically throwing herself over the edge to kiss Whiting's Romeo, immediately removes any staid preconceived notions about Shakespeare's writings and boils the central spine of the play down to its most relatable essence, that this is ultimately the story of two kids in love. The surrounding production matches the sensuality of the performances; Danilo Donati's costumes justifiably won an Oscar, and Nino Rota, composer of The Godfather , wrote a love theme that's just the right amount of ravishing and haunted. As long as the story of these original star-crossed lovers is able to elicit emotions from an audience, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet will remain its greatest cinematic adaptation.

Next: Twilight: Every Romeo & Juliet Reference Explained

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Parents' guide to, romeo and juliet.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 10 Reviews
Kids Say 29 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

By Scott G. Mignola , based on child development research. How do we rate?

Wonderful, but a little too mature for some kids.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that four centuries haven't diminished the relevance of this tragic and brilliantly worded story, in which the examples of two feuding families drive home a fatal point. Still, teens may see the story as a glamorization of suicide and the subject is well worth discussing with them.

Why Age 14+?

Nude male posterior and a glimpse of breasts in a tasteful bed scene.

Bitter quarreling leads to murder and suicide. Some deadly swordplay. Two young

Any Positive Content?

Buried beneath the lyricism and romance is a basic mesaage promoting peace.

Despite the sweeping romance of the story, Romeo and Juliet take their own lives

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Bitter quarreling leads to murder and suicide. Some deadly swordplay. Two young people take their own lives.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Positive role models.

Despite the sweeping romance of the story, Romeo and Juliet take their own lives, disobey their parents, and Romeo even commits murder. Romantic and heart-breaking? Absolutely! Role model worthy? Definitely not!

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (10)
Kids say (29)

Based on 10 parent reviews

beautiful and heartfelt!

Bland obscene version, what's the story.

Franco Zeffirelli's ambitious production of ROMEO AND JULIET brought Shakespeare to the masses in 1968. He did it not by dumbing the play down, but by casting two talented unknowns, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey (ages seventeen and fifteen, respectively) as the leads. Much like Titanic would thirty years later, Romeo and Juliet struck a chord with teenagers, who found its beautiful young stars' urgency and tragic plight irresistible. Shot in Italy, Zeffirelli's faithful production of the tragedy also features a very young Michael York as Tybalt.

Is It Any Good?

Zefirelli's performers breathe understanding into every ornate phrase, translating the sixteenth-century prose into something fresh and modern. This stands in stark contrast to the peculiar travesty Romeo + Juliet , in which Leonardo DiCaprio and others spew Shakespeare's lines without understanding them,

When Romeo first spies Juliet, you believe--even before he speaks--that he's irreparably in love. Their balcony scene is wonderfully passionate, and the finale all the more potent for Laurence Olivier's uncredited narration. (But a cautionary note to parents: Teens may see the story as a glamorization of suicide and the subject is well worth discussing with them.)

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the movie's depiction of suicide.

Why do the two families hate one another?

How does the ending make you feel about love?

Movie Details

In theaters : October 8, 1968
On DVD or streaming : January 7, 2002
Cast : Leonard Whiting , Michael York , Olivia Hussey
Director : Franco Zeffirelli
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Paramount Pictures
Genre : Drama
Topics : Book Characters
Run time : 138 minutes
MPAA rating : PG
MPAA explanation : brief nudity and mature themes
Last updated : October 13, 2022

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DVD & Streaming

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet

Content caution.

In Theaters

Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, Miriam Margolyes, John Leguizamo, Brian Dennehy

Home Release Date

Baz Luhrmann

Distributor

Movie Review

Romeo + Juliet earned $11.6 million as it bested all box-office suitors opening weekend. But what would cause the MTV generation to endure two hours of Shakespearean verse? How about an ad campaign promising gang violence and teen lust frantically edited to a rock soundtrack featuring Everclear, Radiohead, Garbage and Butthole Surfers—warped bands as forbidden in some homes as a tryst between Montague and Capulet.

This latest version of the bard’s classic play is set in an urban jungle ruled by warring gang families. Pistols carelessly twirled and menacingly cocked replace swords and daggers (or the switchblades of West Side Story ). Romeo’s best friend, Mercutio, has been reduced to a cross-dressing disco queen who offers him a mind-altering drug to help him party. Gaudy religious icons fill the screen, including neon crosses, cheaply cast Madonnas and garish paintings of Christ.

The famous balcony scene, rewritten as an immodest romp in the Capulet swimming pool, finds Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Juliet (Claire Danes) pledging undying love for each other on the very night they meet. Smouldering hormones pass for romance. The star-crossed lovers are secretly married the following day, and share a night of passion that some young viewers may be inspired to imitate without regard for vows and rings.

“DiCaprio and Danes make the bandying of words a sly, erotic game,” gushed Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers. “Shakespeare has never been this sexy onscreen.”

There’s another reason Romeo & Juliet earned a PG-13 rating. While not explicit, the film’s violence is vicious and vengeful as Romeo runs down and guns down the Capulet who stabs his gender-bending buddy. In the fictional dog-eat-dog land of Verona Beach, nearly everyone carries a designer handgun, and screeches from drive-by to drive-by in trashy cars with vanity plates. The city is in a constant state of chaos … and life is cheap.

The most disturbing and potentially dangerous scene romanticizes the tragic couple’s climactic double suicide. Romeo drinks poison. Juliet puts a pistol to her head and pulls the trigger. The camera pulls back. We see the lovers lying together peacefully amid hundreds of flickering candles. What image does this present to despondent and self-destructive adolescents? Death brings tranquility. Teens convinced that the future is empty and hopeless (as they’ve been told in countless CDs and music videos) could mimic the movie’s poetic quick-fix, resulting in real-life tragedy.

Director Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet is a stylish, yet empty assault on the senses which, in the end, is more intrigued with cultural bedlam than with the doomed relationship of its namesakes . What light through yonder projection room window breaks? It is Romeo & Juliet . And it is trouble.

Positive Elements

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Meredith Goldstein (left) and producer Christine Ahanotu speaking inside the Loeb Drama Center.

Boston Globe advice columnist Meredith Goldstein (left) and “Love Letters” podcast producer Christine Ahanotu discuss young love following “Romeo and Juliet” at the Loeb Drama Center.

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Globe relationship columnist sorts timeless elements of youth, love, social divisions of 16th-century classic in new A.R.T. production

Meredith Goldstein did not leap at the chance to host an after-show conversation about the American Repertory Theater’s production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

It is, after all, one of Shakespeare’s best-known and most-performed plays. Besides the live performances of the 16th-century classic staged around the country and the world each year, there have been scores of interpretations, adaptations, and send-ups on television and film. Could there possibly be anything new to say?

But as The Boston Globe’s relationship columnist and podcaster watched the new A.R.T. production it occurred to her that there are a lot of themes worth talking about — and new ways to talk about them — which she did with the audience after last Thursday’s performance.

“I was reminded of the great humor — I laughed so much more than I thought I would,” Goldstein said. “I really wanted to talk about [younger people]. In writing an advice column for 15 years, I’m constantly shocked by the lack of empathy for young people with problems.”

The event, called “You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me With These Two: A Post-Show Talk about Young Love — and How We Change,” featured a conversation between Goldstein and Christine Ahanotu, a producer of independent films and The Globe writer’s “Love Letters” podcast.

The pair discussed with the audience their previous encounters with “Romeo and Juliet” and what struck them differently about the story during A.R.T.’s production.

For both Goldstein and Ahanotu, people’s ability — or inability — to change was worth noting.

“Our ability to change is influenced greatly by our age,” Ahanotu said. “The things that seem like huge decisions when we are teenagers … It’s easy as we age to forget that newness and the novelty, but it’s a really real thing.”

Our brains don’t really settle until we’re 25, sometimes even older, Goldstein said. Romeo and Juliet are teenagers. While their behavior seems outlandish at times, even foolish, it’s also a pretty accurate portrayal of how younger people might act. One thing that was missing in their lives was good advice.

“Having counsel and help is really important, and I think this play shows how terrible adults can be about that and how sometimes they can’t see beyond their own priorities,” Goldstein said.

Directed by Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus and choreographed by two-time Olivier Award winner Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the production stars Rudy Pankow (“Outer Banks”Netflix series) as Romeo and Emilia Suárez (“Up Here” Hulu series) as Juliet.

The cast portrays the roles with nuance, staying true to Shakespeare’s language but bringing an updated approach to movement, delivery, and staging that made their characters feel more contemporary.

Audience members observed the selfishness of the adults, pointed out how much of the plot is driven by the irrationality of teenage hormones, and wondered how things would have turned out if the characters had practiced better communication.

“As much as things change is as much as they remain the same,” Ahanotu said. The play is full of class, race, social, age, and gender divisions — with characters constantly taking sides. “Why is it that we allow [those divides] to affect the people that we love?”

Toward the end of the conversation, Ahanotu and Goldstein talked about how Romeo’s behavior might be described in the social-media-inflected language of today. Was he “love-bombing” Juliet, showering her with immense positivity all at once? Was he “monkey-branching,” having spent the whole beginning of the play confessing his heartbreak over Rosaline and just like that, “Juliet is the sun”?

One audience member asked how Goldstein thought Romeo would have performed on today’s dating apps. Would he be considered a menace?

“I think he would be the absolute worst, but I understand why everyone would swipe right,” Goldstein said, eliciting laughs. “Talk about a pickup artist … It’s brilliant and terrible.”

Romeo and Juliet will be running until Oct. 6. For showtimes and to purchase tickets, visit A.R.T.’s website .

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Romeo and Juliet

Like many victims of the American education system, I had a dislike for Shakespeare years before I got my hands on anything he had written. His name was a password to be profaned by 12-year-olds whose voices had started to change and who therefore had to act tough and cynical and, especially at 12, anti-intellectual.

But part of the problem came later, in the classroom, where we inched through “ Julius Caesar ” and “ Macbeth ” at a velocity of ten lines an hour. It was impossible to read Shakespeare as slowly as we did and remember anything from the first three acts by the time we got to the murders. “Who’s this Brutus guy?” we whispered. What was needed as an introduction was an approach that caught the spirit and life of Shakespeare and didn’t get bogged down prematurely in the language.

With this in mind, I believe Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” is the most exciting film of Shakespeare ever made. Not because it is greater drama than Olivier’s “ Henry V ,” because it is not. Nor is it greater cinema than Welles’ “ Falstaff .” But it is greater Shakespeare than either because it has the passion, the sweat, the violence, the poetry, the love and the tragedy in the most immediate terms I can imagine. It is a deeply moving piece of entertainment, and that is possibly what Shakespeare would have preferred.

To begin with, Zeffirelli’s film is the first production of “Romeo and Juliet” I am familiar with in which the romance is taken seriously. Always before, we have had actors in their 20s or 30s or even older, reciting Shakespeare’s speeches to each other as if it were the words that mattered. They do not, as anyone who has proposed marriage will agree. Often enough, one cannot even remember what was said at moments of great emotion; the words are outpourings of the soul.

And that is the effect Zeffirelli achieves in two almost impossible scenes: the balcony scene and the double suicide in the tomb. There are some lines in Shakespeare too famous for their own good. When Hamlet winds up for “to be, or not to be,” the entire audience is there ahead of him, waiting for those lines, watching them come down the track. The same is true of Juliet’s “Romeo, Romeo, oh, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” The very words bring back memories of campfire skits.

It is to the credit of Zeffirelli and his young players ( Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey ) that they have brought the lines and characters of Romeo and Juliet back to life again. In a theater filled to capacity Saturday night, not one single person found it necessary to snicker when Juliet asked so simply where Romeo was; we were looking for him, too.

The success of the film depends upon Whiting and Miss Hussey. Zeffirelli reportedly interviewed hundreds of young actors and actresses before choosing them; if so, then this is the first movie “talent search” worth the trouble. They are magnificent. We can see why Zeffirelli didn’t want older actors. The love between Romeo and Juliet, and the physical passion that comes with it, are of that naive and hopeless intensity only those in love for the very first time can comprehend.

Zeffirelli places his lovers within a world of everyday life. With the first shots of the film, we are caught up in the feud between the Capulets and the Montagues. We understand the nature of the quarrel between Tybalt ( Michael York ) and Mercutio ( John McEnery ) instinctively because Zeffirelli has picked them for their types: cocky insolence vs. sly mockery. The key supporting roles of Friar Lawrence ( Milo O'Shea ) and Juliet’s nurse ( Pat Heywood ) are also superbly cast. For once, the nurse and friar are young enough to have empathy with the lovers. In most productions, they are creaking relics.

And all of this is photographed with great intensity (even a hand-held camera for the dueling scenes) and beauty. As in his first film, “The Taming of the Shrew,” Zeffirelli has controlled his colors carefully. Everything is red and brown and yellow, dusty and sunlit, except for the fresh green of the garden during the balcony scene and the darkness of the tomb.

A lot of fuss has been made about the brief, beautiful nude love scene. I doubt whether anyone could see it and disapprove of it, but apparently someone has. The Chicago Board of Education I am informed, objects to the nudity and will not approve the film for educational use after its commercial run. This is stupidity.

If Chicago’s educators could show me a city filled with students who rejoice in Shakespeare, I would yield the point. But they cannot, and Zeffirelli is so far ahead of them, so much richer and deeper, so much more inspired in his interpretation of our greatest poet, that the Board of Education cannot fly with him and must find excuses in half a dozen frames of a joyous film.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Leonard Whiting as Romeo
Olivia Hussey as Juliet
Michael York as Tybalt
John McEnery as Mercutio
Pat Heywood as Nurse
Milo O’Shea as Friar Lawrence
Paul Hardwick as Lord Capulet
Natasha Parry as Lady Capulet
Antonio Pierfederici as Lord Montague
Esmeralda Ruspoli as Lady Montague

Produced by

Anthony Havelock-Allan
John Brabourne

Screenplay by

Franco Brusati
Masolino D’Amico

Directed by

Franco Zeffirelli

Photographed by

Pasquale De Santiis

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What Is Cinema?

First Look: Rachel Zegler and Kit Connor Hit Broadway as Romeo + Juliet —With a Jack Antonoff Assist

It’s no accident that the latest Broadway revival of Romeo + Juliet begins previews on September 26, just a few short weeks before the US presidential election. The buzzy production, starring West Side Story breakout Rachel Zegler and Heartstopper ’s Kit Connor, with an original score by Jack Antonoff and direction by Tony winner Sam Gold, aims to place William Shakespeare’s 16th-century text into the present day, complete with voter registration partnerships and a particular eye toward the play’s themes of ideological division and whether they can be overcome.

“This play is about generational trauma and the world we leave behind for our children,” Zegler told Vanity Fair from her dressing room, complete with a black-and-white photograph of theatrical patron saint Stephen Sondheim on the wall. “It is a generational feud that causes the death of five characters in this play, and that is not a small number. So I think there’s a real deep importance to understand the world we are leaving behind for the next generation. And as someone who used to be the next generation and is now the generation, I cannot emphasize enough, as an American citizen, the importance of exercising your right to vote.”

Sitting next to Zegler, Connor, a Brit, offers his solidarity with the sentiment and help with the registration drives, even though he can’t vote himself: “I’ve got to do my duty!”

Image may contain Lighting Concert Crowd Person Group Performance Clothing Footwear Shoe and Stage

The show has been hotly anticipated, and details beyond its roster of cast and creatives have been kept largely under wraps, until now. This is Romeo + Juliet as you’ve never quite seen it before, exposed bra straps and all.

No, thine eyes do not deceive you: Those are indeed stuffed animals strewn about the stage early in the show.

Until now, the best sense of the show has come from a teaser trailer featuring Zegler and Connor in suburban New Jersey, set to Antonoff’s band Bleachers’ “Tiny Moves” and released in May. They canoodle on a couch and in a bathtub full of stuffed animals (“There’s lots of teddy bears in this production,” Connor says, Zegler backing him up, wide-eyed: “He’s not even lying”), dressed in windbreakers and tank tops, the back of Zegler-as-Juliet’s bra visible over the back of her top throughout, Connor-as-Romeo kneeling on the bedspread in black boxer briefs and reaching out to caress her face. That sense of imperfect charged-up youth will be present in the show, they promise, even if the dialogue is a few hundred years old.

“We don’t change any of the language, but I think it’s also very much kind of grounded in the modern day and with the youth of today,” Connor says. “I think that this production is exploring lots of things about what it is to be a young person today and exploring things like violence and sex and societal pressures and all that fun stuff.”

It’s never specified whether the fair Verona where Gold’s production lays its scene is in Shakespeare’s Italy, or, say, Verona, New Jersey, a suburb whose name causes Zegler to perk up and chirp “I played volleyball there!” while Connor marvels, “Oh, is that actually a place?”

The theater where the Montagues, Capulets, and their associates will let their bloody love story unravel isn’t just any stage, either: The Circle in the Square isn’t just where Gold won that Tony for directing the musical Fun Home , or where he staged his recent critically lauded play An Enemy of the People, but it’s also the closest thing Broadway has to a theater in the round setup, its thrust stage meaning that there are both no bad seats for the audience, and nowhere to hide for its nervous stars. The production announced floor seats for the show, which Zegler says will be “like seeing a movie in 4DX” for those who opt for them, while Connor warns, “You’re not just on the edge of the action, you’re in it, frankly. That’s how we want it to be. We want to take these scenes that are incredibly iconic and you want to feel like you’re there.”

New Jersey native Zegler was awestruck seeing the theater transformed for the show. “As someone who’s grown up seeing shows in this theater, I’ve never seen it used in such a way, where it’s kind of become a jungle gym of sorts for the cast of and the crew of this show,” she says. “It’s a lot of like running, jumping, climbing, and I think that that’s a really cool thing to bring into it, and that’s why all of us have never been in better shape.”

And adding to that “incredibly immersive” vibe in the intimate venue, Zegler says, is Antonoff’s score. The show isn’t a musical, but they’ll both sing in it, they tease. Or, as Connor says, “She sings. I make an attempt.”

“He sings beautifully, by the way,” Zegler says. “He’s bluffing.”

Image may contain Head Person Face Photography Portrait and Adult

Zegler calls Antonoff “kind of the bard of the modern generation. I feel like any kind of young person you speak to, whether it’s somebody who is more of a Bleachers fan than they are of Taylor Swift or Lana Del Rey, that man has songs with Bruce Springsteen. He kind of appeals to all of it. I feel like, whilst using the language of the 1590s, we are showing you, the audience, that it hasn’t changed. The world hasn’t changed, and the way that young people explore their feelings hasn’t changed.”

Even before previews began, the show’s run was extended by four weeks, a good sign. “It’s not a bad start,” Connor says, then adds, “We just got to make sure that it’s good.” Zegler, too, is a little fretful about potential VIP audience members and the possibility that “they don’t tell us that somebody we admire is in the audience, and then they lock eyes, because you can see everyone from the stage.” The splashy marketing campaign and starry names involved in the show seem to be working for the goal of getting younger people to the theater, maybe introducing them to Shakespeare for the first time.

“This thing that Sam likes to tell us is this idea that this group of young kids have just kind of knocked and broken their way into the Circle in the Square and put on a play because it feels like that’s what they need right now, and that’s what the world needs,” Connor says.

The “ultimate goal is to make this a palatable iambic pentameter for the youth of today to walk away with the newfound love of Shakespeare,” Zegler says, “a newfound love of live theater, and for this, what we’ve come to lovingly call a tragicomedy, because there’s still a lot of really lovely moments of humor in it.”

Kase Wickman

Contributing editor, royal watch.

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COMMENTS

Romeo + Juliet movie review & film summary (1996)
This production was a very bad idea. It begins with a TV anchor reporting on the deaths of Romeo and Juliet while the logo "Star Crossed Lovers" floats above her shoulder. We see newspaper headlines (the local paper is named "Verona Today"). There is a fast montage identifying the leading characters, and showing the city of Verona Beach ...
Romeo & Juliet movie review (2013)
It's that the British actor who plays Romeo, Douglas Booth, is just so obscenely male-model attractive, with his pillowy lips, jutting cheekbones and dazzling eyes—and don't the filmmakers know it, as they flaunt his beauty with an open-shirted entrance. *The balcony scene takes a tumble. This is the movie's greatest disappointment.
Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet is as Irreplaceable as Ever
The lack of new Shakespeare adaptations hitting U.S. theaters provides us with an opportunity: to revisit Baz Luhrmann 's " Romeo + Juliet," released 24 years ago this month. A modern spin on the romantic tragedy defined by Luhrmann's affective style, Jill Bilcock 's frenetic editing, and that banger of a contemporary soundtrack ...
Revisiting Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet as It Turns 25
By Stephanie Zacharek. October 28, 2021 6:11 PM EDT. Romeo and Juliet is rarely lauded as the greatest of Shakespeare's plays, an honor that usually goes to Hamlet or Macbeth or King Lear. Yet ...
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William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. PG-13 Released Nov 1, 1996 2h 0m Romance Drama TRAILER for CTA List. 74% Tomatometer 69 Reviews 77% Popcornmeter 250,000+ Ratings. Baz Luhrmann helped adapt ...
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Romeo + Juliet is a stunningly detailed, perfectly cast, fun-fuelled immersive experience. A true love letter to one of the best movies of the nineties, this event is an absolute must for fans ...
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Romeo + Juliet catapulted Luhrmann into the A-list, where he was given free reign on his next film, Moulin Rouge. Unfortunately, I think Lurhmann's love of visual excess overwhelmed this and his ...
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Sep 3, 2023. 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.
Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Romeo + Juliet: Directed by Baz Luhrmann. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, John Leguizamo, Harold Perrineau. Shakespeare's famous play is updated to the hip modern suburb of Verona still retaining its original dialogue.
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Our review: Parents say (16 ): Kids say (92 ): Director Baz Luhrmann's whirling dervish adaptation of the classic tale of ROMEO + JULIET is replete with glowing surfaces, quick-cutting action, and a soundtrack that bites. This is Shakespeare for Generation X, Y, and Z. Any teenager growing up in the mid 90s will attest to the unbeatable hipness ...
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Read a review and overview of Baz Luhrmann's classic Romeo and Juliet 1996. Romeo and Juliet is arguably the classic romantic story of all time, so it's little wonder that Shakespeare's play has been reproduced on the silver screen so many times. In 1996 Baz Luhrmann's version was released to great critical acclaim, grossing close to ...
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William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (often shortened to Romeo + Juliet) is a 1996 romantic crime film directed, produced, and co-written by Baz Luhrmann.It is a modernized adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy of the same name, albeit still utilizing Shakespearean English.The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles of two teenagers who fall in love, despite ...
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Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, which turns 25 this month, was a cultural reset before the term was popularised, indelibly printing its stamp on our collective imaginations. Referenced in ...
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The resulting hybrid background is startling. Romeo and Juliet 's camera is restless, always moving. There are times when the rapid cuts and raging soundtrack might cause understandable confusion between the movie and a rock video. Indeed, with all the camera tricks, special effects (such as a roiling storm), and riotous splashes of color, it's ...
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The 1996 Baz Lurhmann movie turns 25 this year, so it seems as good a time as any to look back on how these films rank from worst to best. 4. Romeo & Juliet (2013) Every generation seemingly gets their Romeo and Juliet, but this adaptation by Downton Abbey scribe Julian Fellowes barely gets the blood pumping.
Romeo and Juliet movie review (1968)
September 17, 2000. 7 min read. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting as "Romeo and Juliet." "Romeo and Juliet" is always said to be the first romantic tragedy ever written, but it isn't really a tragedy at all. It's a tragic misunderstanding, scarcely fitting the ancient requirement of tragedy that the mighty fall through their own flaws.
Romeo and Juliet Movie Review
Our review: Parents say (10 ): Kids say (29 ): Zefirelli's performers breathe understanding into every ornate phrase, translating the sixteenth-century prose into something fresh and modern. This stands in stark contrast to the peculiar travesty Romeo + Juliet, in which Leonardo DiCaprio and others spew Shakespeare's lines without understanding ...
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Movie Review. Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny …. So starts the familiar story of two long-feuding families and two young and beautiful teens―Juliet, from the Capulet family, and Romeo from the house of Montague.
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Movie Review. Romeo + Juliet earned $11.6 million as it bested all box-office suitors opening weekend. But what would cause the MTV generation to endure two hours of Shakespearean verse? How about an ad campaign promising gang violence and teen lust frantically edited to a rock soundtrack featuring Everclear, Radiohead, Garbage and Butthole ...
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Romeo and Juliet movie review (1968)
October 15, 1968. 4 min read. Like many victims of the American education system, I had a dislike for Shakespeare years before I got my hands on anything he had written. His name was a password to be profaned by 12-year-olds whose voices had started to change and who therefore had to act tough and cynical and, especially at 12, anti-intellectual.
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I Panned Romeo + Juliet in 1996. Now I Think It’s One of the Best Shakespeare Adaptations

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