Romeo And Juliet [1996] (DVD)

These days it seems that Baz Luhrmann is best known for his recent masterpiece Moulin Rouge, but cast your minds back a few years and you may remember his version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Like many recent films (10 Things I Hate About You- based on the Taming of the Shrew, She’s All That- based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Clueless- loosely based on Jane Austen’s Emma), this is a modern take on a classic story. However, what sets it apart from these films is the fact that Baz Luhrmann has not rejected Shakespeare’s script in favour of a modern translation; he has remained faithful to the original text. Having adored ...  Read the complete review

Romeo and Juliet is the 1996 film adaptation from William Shakespeare's play of the same name and it comes from Australian director, Baz Luhrmann, who also produced and co wrote the screenplay for this film. It is rated 12 due to violence and language and the film is 120 minutes long. Surprisingly, Romeo and Juliet only had a budget of around $14 million but it has made more than 10x that worldwide. Plot In Verona Beach, two big families of the business world are arch enemies and their younger members are always fighting and disrupting the peace. Nursing a broken heart, Romeo Montague and his friends take off to a party at the Capulet's house, even ...  Read the complete review

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a tale of young lovers who fall in love despite the fact that their families are at war. What ensues is a mix of love and death, as the deep rooted bitterness between the families puts their relationship under the ultimate pressure. This is a good film. I watch it with my school classes each year as they prepare for their Romeo and Juliet essays. I like it, and it manages to do two things very well: 1) It keeps Shakespeare's language - the whole thing is in Shakespearean language which is great. The best thing about old Shakey were his words, and here we have the intact. 2) It modernises the setting - ...  Read the complete review

There are not many films that I can watch more than once - but Baz Luhtmann's adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Romeo & Juliet' is one of them. I am not, generally, a Luhrmann fan. He is a director whose work is studied at GCSE level at my school (Moulin Rouge and Romeo & Juliet) and I sometimes feel a bit of an outcast when I express the opinion that I find some of his work irritating! Luhrmann's adaptation of 'Romeo & Juliet' was brought bang up to date in the early 90s with the film set in Verona Beach in the USA rather than Verona in Italy. The contemporary relevance of the play's rivalry is clear with Luhrmann exploiting the gang culture of ...  Read the complete review

I felt a bit cheated at School that I learnt Macbeth and not Romeo and Juliet, it always seemed quite difficult to get into Shakespeares writing without proper education in that area, I will always be grateful to Baz Luhrmann for making such an accessible conscious film which made me totally understand the prose and story of Romeo and Juliet. For anyone who hasn't seen the film, Baz Luhrmann is the director of Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge, camp colourful films with vibrancy and a real artistic touch, he decided to make Shakespeare more relevant to todays youth and created the story, transferring the fair city of Verona to Venice Beach California and ...  Read the complete review