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. However, Lurhmann also knows when to slow things down and rely on his performers. 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. 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. 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 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. Romeo and Juliet (1936)Īs 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. 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.
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. Douglas Booth's Romeo is dreamy enough, but his monotonous delivery never makes Shakespeare's language sing. 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. 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. Romeo & Juliet (2013)Įvery generation seemingly gets their Romeo and Juliet, but this adaptation by Downton Abbey scribe Julian Fellowes barely gets the blood pumping.
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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. That means no zombies, no Sharks, and no Jets. This list, however, will focus only on the adaptations of the play that hew most closely to Shakespeare's original text.
Related: Romeo + Juliet 1996 Cast & Character Guide 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. 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. 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. 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.
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