ROMEO AND JULIET
A film review by Jon Ridge
Copyright 1996 Jon Ridge
I still believe that trailers should receive Academy Awards. It's kind of hard what those guys do: They've got to successfully evoke the mood and spirit of a film, while not actually giving the film itself away. And most importantly, of course, they have to make us, the audience, want to see the film.
This is certainly true of a trailer I saw a few months back for ROMEO AND JULIET. With its use of sharp editing and the right selection of music from the soundtrack, it made me want to see the film. Actually, I couldn't wait. So, I went wanting to like Baz Luhrmann's update of the Shakespeare classic not only because of that preview, but because the concept of placing such poetic and elegant verse in modern day intrigues me. And the director does a damn good job creating the surreality I'm sure he was looking to in which that verse could exist.
But, that is about where the positivity ends.
R&J plays as if somebody shot up, got high, then opened a copy of Cliff's Notes and read. Couldn't really understand what any of it was supposed to mean, and laughed at the whole thing. The film is trying to be different, like nothing we've ever seen before, which I definitely admire. However, if you are going to take classic lit this lightly, you've got to show some more control. I don't mean with camera angles, and editing techniques, but over the flow of the plot. This picture seems a whole lot more interested in being outrageous and bold than in the story it's trying to liven up.
For all it's fresh approach, there simply isn't much vitality.
The opening duel at a gas station is played, it seems, for laughs, and is filmed in a comical way, with hardly anyone getting shot.
As is the scene of Juliet and her mom getting ready for the upcoming party.
There is a scene on the beach in which Tybault is pounding Romeo, and Romeo doesn't fight back (primarily because he loves Juliet and Tybault is related to her, and I assume his restraint is out of respect). But then, Mercutio gets involved. It's clear _he_ wants to kill Tybault (because Romeo will not do it, and because Tybault's clan are bad boys and Mercutio doesn't want to see Romeo end up as such), but he drops his gun in the sand in order to fist fight with Tybault.
The father played by Paul Sorvino absolutely explodes when Juliet says she isn't going to marry Paris, quite nearly strangling his own daughter. I hear this is portrayed in Shakespeare's play, but here in the film we don't get to know Paris enough to care about him, or understand his connection with Juliet's father aside from being her suitor.
The party that Romeo crashes - Romeo comes in, having dropped acid moments before, and sees Mercutio in drag singing and dancing, and Juliet's father doing some sort of bad opera. The point of all of that, of course, being to get the audience into Romeo's mindset. I just felt it was way, way overdone.
And so, I left with a less than satisfied feeling. I know that the criticisms I have mentioned above are the director's new vision on old themes, and they are to be respected. In intention. But nothing he had to say sat right with me.
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