Don't see it

Rating: 1/10 (26 March 2006)

Romeo and Juliet... a great story, yes? Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo? Um... no. Overall this is a particularly awful version. First of all, the Elizabethan dialect in the modern setting distracts horribly from the storyline. To see a man with pink hair in a half-open Hawaiian shirt saying thee and thou and other such nonsense is generally not pleasing to the modern audience. In addition, if you didn't know the story, you'd be extremely confused. There are some, well, not plot holes, but very confusing sections. In general the movie shows almost no traces of the fact that the Capulets and the Montagues hate each other. Furthermore several completely unnecessary (and rather disgusting) additions have been made, including a cross-dressing Mercutio. The "prince of cats" title attributed to Tybalt is atrociously overdone - he hisses at people. So if you want to see a great version of this classic story, see the 1968 version with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey - a much more satisfying movie.