![]() I’ll refrain from eviscerating the performance of John Leguizamo who was seriously miscast as was Jamie Kennedy in a smaller role. Harold Perrinau was the real scene-stealer as Mercutio, and he brought a vibrancy and intensity that managed to seem natural for easily the play’s best character and not make it seem absurdly campish like everything else in the film. Despite the fact that Juliet is an absurdly shallow character, Claire Danes makes it work. Claire Danes has been criminally underrated her entire career (where is the love for My So Called Life), and she’s only just now started getting credit for her talent with her award-winning role on Homeland. Leo and Claire Danes were cast perfectly for these roles, and while Leo wasn’t quite at the prime of his acting ability yet, even at that age, he was still very talented and you could catch glimpses of why he would eventually replace Robert DeNiro as Martin Scorscese’s muse. Luhrmann actually does several things right. This film is hit and miss, but when it misses, it’s a trainwreck. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes take the roles of the two star-crossed lovers with back-up support from Lost‘s Harold Perrinau as the flamboyant Mercutio, Super Mario Bros‘ John Leguizamo as the villainous Tybalt, Role Models‘ Paul Rudd as Juliet’s betrothed Paris, and many others. Luhrmann’s versin of the play takes place in (then) modern America in Verona Beach, California (an obvious play on Venice Beach) while still maintaining Shakespeare’s original dialogue, therefore guns are still called swords and everyone is talking like they just stepped out of the renaissance fair. Anyone who has seen Moulin Rouge knows that Luhrmann isn’t exactly the most subtle director out there (and don’t get me started on the sin of including “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in that film), but Luhrmann’s modernized adaptation of Romeo and Juliet left subtlety behind in pre-production and went for almost unwatchable camp instead. Well, leave it to Baz Luhrmann to take an already problematic play and turn it into an over-stylized and cartoonish mess. Shakespeare’s prose was as brilliant as ever, but I’ve never been able to emotionally invest myself in this story the same way I could with Hamlet, Macbeth, or (my favorite) King Lear. It’s hogwash and completely unrealistic to the point of being patently absurd. ![]() Within a week of being together, they are so madly in love with one another that Romeo commits suicide when he believes Juliet is dead and Juliet does the same when she finds her Romeo when she awakens from her self-inflicted coma. Romeo is a love-sick puppy dog pining over a woman named Rosaline at the beginning of the play to the point where he’s become depressed over not having her (I won’t even get into Juliet’s complete lack of a personality) but after seeing Juliet, a member of his family’s sworn enemies, he falls heads over heels in love with her (as does she to him), and they are married within a day. There’s no denying that the play contains some of his most memorable lines and that the and the violent spiral of events leading up to its ending are suitably tragic, but I’ve never been able to buy into the love story at the center of the play. While I’m a self-admitted fanatic of William Shakespeare, I am not especially fond of Romeo and Juliet. ![]() Here’s something that may shock my readers.
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