Romeo & Juliet (2013)

Waste of time

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Awesome and heart touching movie I've ever watched. Great true love story just end sadly. Such good acting, especially from Romeo and Juliet. They fail in this real world but win and get united for ever at heavens with peace. I am so inspired of this love story. I'd definitely recommend this movie!

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.

or only decent. its virtue is not the acting - with few exceptions- or the Shakespeare's adaptation. its virtue is not the ambition to give a new Romeo and Juliet ignoring, too easy, the force, the flavor, the precision of the original.its virtue is not the slices of Zeffirelli 's version who are the subject of comparison. its good part is the wall of old buildings, costumes, Paul Giamatti. and the lead actors for youth, beauty and the good intentions. is it enough ? maybe not. but it could be a beginning. because , in fact, it is only an exercise. the play remains for each reader. the film remains only a proposition. so, a beautiful film. or only decent. nice. and far to be a real masterpiece. enjoy it !

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.