The 1996 movie William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was an interesting interoperation of the original play The Most Excellent and Lamentable Romeo and Juliet. The movie is set in modern times, and uses guns instead of swords, but uses the original text used in the play. This makes the movie different from others, even though they usually leave the events unchanged.
The combination of modern and old was not always a perfect match, and was often the opposite. One thing that was obvious to me was the actors were usually either shouting or whispering their lines. This is alright in some situations, like if Romeo and Juliet are trying to be unheard, but they use this too often and don’t have any in-between. This gets annoying when they should just be talking normally. Another problem is the awkward transitions between scenes. These too are also loud, and usually had odd camera angles.. Some other things that weren’t great about the movie was that the actors always were breathing heavy, which got in the way of the dialog and made you miss a lot of the lines. Another problem I have with the film is that when they said the lines, because of the original text, it just sounded like the the actors were speaking their lines, not actually in the situation, so it doesn’t feel as real.
One thing I did enjoy was that they tried to do something different, but that something different just didn’t seem to work, at least for me. I think the reason that they would have tried this was because they wanted to make the movie different from others because there have been so many versions remade from the original play. I also enjoyed one of the transitions, even though it was made the same way as the others. This transition was the transition between Mercutio’s death, and Tybalt’s. What made this one better than the others because the load sounds, weird camera angles, and people shouting works because Romeo is caught up in rage, and the only thing he cares about is killing Tybalt.
Overall, I thought William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was an O.K movie, but I would have enjoyed it more if they went completely one way or the other, like if they completely modernize it, or base the play entirely in old time, which they then could use the original text.