Metacritic reviews

The costumes and everything else in the film--the photography, the music, above all Shakespeare's language--is so voluptuous, so sensuous.

This decorous production brought Shakespeare’s rapture of first love to timeless life — and death — with achingly sensitive performances in a voluptuous period re-creation.

This has elegance, vigour and charm.

A lovely, sensitive, friendly popularization of the play.

It's a visually stunning adaptation with much action, broad humor, and eroticism.

Leonard Whiting, 17, and Olivia Hussey, 16, look right: tender and beautiful. And, as carefully coached, filmed and edited, they perform creditably. [09 Apr 1999]

Mostly it remains enjoyable for its colour and visual flair. Danilo Donati's costumes are, as usual, breathtaking.

The whole thing sinks on the shoulders of its pretty teen stars (Hussey and Whiting), who exhibit all the raw talent and sensuality of bit players in some bad Spanish soap.

Rarely will audiences be moved to throat-gulping by the plight of the young couple. For all Hussey’s prettiness and Whiting’s shy charm it is clear that they do not understand one tenth of the meaning of their lines and it is a drawback from which the film cannot recover.

Garish and goopy—a kind of West Side Story reworked into its original form.