Luhrmann creates an overly-elaborate slaughtering of Shakespeare's eloquence

Rating: 3/10 (11 April 2010)

In Romeo+Juliet, director/producer Baz Luhrmann takes the traditional story of "two star-crossed lovers," puts it in Verona Beach in about 1970, adds his own little motif of water, over-dramatises the whole story, chooses substandard performers, and to top it all, ignores half of Shakespeare's original text.
In one of the first few scenes, through the chosen costumes, Luhrmann takes what was to some extent implied in the text, and makes Mercutio a transvestite homosexual, Tybalt a devil, and, using blatant stereotypes, Juliet becomes an angel, and Romeo a knight-in-shining- armour. Some might call this "rather cute," I call it lack of imagination.
It seems that, however much he tried, Luhrmann could not succeed by himself, and so tried to find people to be successful for him: Leonardo DiCaprio, for example. DiCaprio was one of the small number of cast members who did a half decent job at their role. DiCaprio quite effectually portrayed the romantic, bashful, teenage Romeo, giving the viewer at least some feeling of verisimilitude. Claire Danes, however, removes this feeling by giving Juliet the image of forced emotion. Also, Luhrmann's casting of Miriam Margoyles, using a somewhat Spanish accent, as the Nurse gives a completely different image of the bawdy Nurse that Shakespeare portrayed. Luhrmann avoids the bawdiness by simply skipping over most of those parts of the original text.
The Nurse's suggestive monologues are not the only sections of the text that Luhrmann skips; he also takes out many side plots and events that occur throughout, apparently without realising that some of them do have some import in the story. For example, in the film, Romeo never kills Paris, who, in the text, is yet another one of the innocent victims of the family feud. This may not have a huge effect, but when there are a number of similarly small events taken out, the effects add up, making what is an excellently written story into something much less powerful.
One might think that, having not done too great a job in other aspects, Luhrmann might have done better on his choice of music. Then one notices that music varying from artists such as Garbage, to One Inch Punch, to the Butthole Surfers, can be summarised, quite simply, as melodramatic rubbish. Quite fitting, considering Luhrmann's apparent love of melodrama, as shown through his choices of casting, costume, setting, and music. And that more or less summarises the whole movie: an over-done butchering of Shakespeare's beautiful writing.