"These times of woe afford no time to woo."

Rating: 8/10 (12 July 2018)

The passage of time has not been kind to this film as far as IMDb's rating system goes. But can you picture the love struck couples who went to see this in the theater when it was originally released? I can just imagine the weeping that occurred at the end of the story, teenage girls clutching their boyfriends' arms in shocked and swollen grief. Ah yes, the saga of Romeo and Juliet.
I actually had a pretty good time with this flick and I'm not really a Shakespeare buff. The modern day updating has a weird sensibility to it, pitting two warring families against each other - the Montagues and the Capulets. The only thing is, it's never really mentioned what started the feud off in the first place. It seemed kind of senseless, and appeared to be almost ethnic in nature, something I don't think will ever be overcome by people who see others as different from themselves. Shakespearean dialog in the hands of these hip-hop oriented thespians sounds oddly anachronistic, but serves well, especially during the comedic moments. I got the biggest kick out of the Montagues 'biting their thumbs' at the Capulets. I don't know if that was in the original play but I thought that scene was hilarious.
Leonardo DiCaprio is far from a favorite of mine but he did a decent job here as Romeo, as did Claire Danes as Juliet. I'm pretty sure Shakespeare would not have envisioned Romeo in a shootout with the cops near the story's finale, nor would he have envisioned much of what else goes on in this latter day tale set in Verona Beach, with players attired in Hawaiian shirts and gang-banger threads coming at each other. But the essence of Romeo and Juliet is there, and if you've been predisposed to ignore the famous bard, a picture like this might just have you picking up a copy of Shakespeare.