Juliet & Romeo

I loved the lighting and directing of this movie... that's about it.

The same beats kept playing throughout the entire movie and I felt like I was slowly going insane. The auto tune was bad and the story was all over the place. I was honestly very confused through this whole movie and ended up bored towards the halfway point.

I did love one actor. His acting and singing really stole the show, and that man is Jamie Ward. Jamie Ward deserves a way better role than this. He needs to be a Disney Prince instead. He would excel at that. The girl that played Juliet wasn't great. Maybe it was the way they wrote her, but I just didn't like her. And why the title change from Romeo and Juliet to Juliet and Romeo other than to be modern. This movie clearly had an agenda and it failed.

My favorite Romeo and Juliet movie is Rosaline. It's funny and modern without being too much. The costumes are better and the acting is great. I know it's not exactly Romeo and Juliet, but it's close. Or watch Journey To Bethlehem. An amazing movie that actually felt true to the story.

There are so, so many reasons this movie was a failure that to enumerate them would be an exercise in exhaustion. I think the most annoying part was also the most ridiculous: everyone talked in different accents, and sang in others. For example, Romeo and Juliet both use something like RP or a southern English accent, but Romeo's father uses a distinct Northern English brogue. Juliet's parents sound the same as her, for whatever reason. Other characters' accents are undeniably American, though we are supposed to believe they're all (or mostly) native residents of the same city. To confuse matters further, everyone sings in an American accent!

As for the rest, the music was poorly written and just as poorly produced, the script (all modern English) was practically phoned in, and the cinematography was amateurish. The worst offense, however, was a complete disregard for key character moments and interactions that lovers of Shakespeare cherish from the original play. Phrases and lines from the source text are haphazardly re-contextualized-and delivered so carelessly-that they lose their original power, poetry, and philosophical punch. After close to an hour of watching this joke of a production, I decided to revoke the rest of the time I had originally entrusted to the film (during the apothecary's song, if that matters). Maybe that undercuts the validity of my review, but I don't care. Enduring the rest of that awful movie isn't worth bolstering the arguments of an online review that hardly anyone will read.

In fairness, I liked the imagery of the musical scene where the main characters have parted ways from the church but are still together "in their hearts," or whatever, but ONLY on an aesthetic level, because everything else about that scene is creatively tragic.

Please save yourself the time- this is truly a mess. Abysmal. Can't decide what it wants to be. Inauthentic. I could go on. This doesn't even get close to explaining how unwatchable this film is. Who wanted HIGH SCHOOL MUSIC meets ROMEO AND JULIET? I can't begin to imagine.

The one star is for Derek Jacobi - how on earth did they ever get him? He is fun to watch even if the rest of the movie is complete swill.

I also think someone should explain to the people who made this film that no one is interested in this being a series (hopefully the box office numbers already made this decision for them).

There are some positives to this film: Costume design Scenery/staging Some of the cast - Derek Jacobi is a National Treasure, so we must assume that he was on holiday when his agent signed him up for this and you have to wonder how badly the Ruperts (Everett and Graves) needed the money but Jeremy Isaacs can have no excuse - he seems to be in everything these days.

But so much that is wrong (or downright bad) that it's difficult to know where to begin... The continuous intrusive music score - it's bad enough that it's there and I can't find words to stress the lie of "the greatest music of our time" (IMDb quote) but it's worse because cinemas turn the volume up so much. It is constant and drowns out much of the awful ...

Dialogue - trying desperately to hint back to Shakespeare and failing at every turn. There's even a moment when one of the cast says "oh wait" before delivering half a line from The Bard. And then there are the ...

Accents. OK so 14th century Verona would be a bit of a melting pot of cultures but Jeremy Isaacs' fake Yorkshire accent is just distracting even given everyone changing to American accents when they sing.

But the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel must be the total lack of chemistry between Juliet and Romeo. So little chemistry that no amount of their bad acting can make even a glimmer of a spark. It's actually a relief when they "die" (though being unconscious can't stop them singing)

At 2hrs 2mins of life that you will never get back, this is definitely one to miss but there's a closing threat of "to be continued..."

This film is a bit all over the place and never quite hit on what I think it intended to.

First, the cinematography is often jumbled and rushed. The angles are off and the lighting is awkward, many scenes leaving you feeling almost as if you're watching an older person play a first-person open-wolrld video game for the first time. Additionally, it appears that they have chosen to add cold air breath effects to almost every person speaking, even in daytime scenes. This became very distracting for me.

The writing in the movie seemed way off. Many times the characters used Shakespearean speak for dialogue, then other times it was modern, felt like the writing of a high school play. Then all of the songs were lyrically written in completely different form of speaking than the way the characters normally spoke in dialogue.

On the topic of the songs, they felt completely out of place from the rest of the movie. In many musicals, the songs fit in with the scenes and they feel connected, relevant, and as if it is a continuation of a scene, not a break from it. In Julie & Romeo, the songs feel like a break from the scenes. They feel very much like an odd music video in the middle of watching this movie. Many odd music videos. Every song sounds so musically busy and over-produced and it is very obvious the characters are lip-syncing.

The only good parts about this film are the set and then some of the costumes (some costumes felt like costumes, maybe even from Spirit Halloween). Also the storyline, while different from the actual story of Romeo and Juliet, was overall fun and interesting. However, with all of the other poor choices and challenges the writers and director took with this movie, it left me really disliking the movie. It seemed like the film was majorly suffering from an identity crisis and didn't know if it should be a retelling of the original Shakespeare play, a musical in movie form, a musical in theatrical production form, a modern day love story, etc. Seems like they tried to include it all, jumble it together, and hoped for the best. This movie was a mess and I was counting down the time for it be over from the first song.

For anyone reading this and then going to see the film, good luck. Hopefully you'll feel differently about the movie and actually enjoy it.