A failure

Rating: 1/10 (28 February 2004)

This modern version of Romeo and Juliet was actually the most foolish one I have ever seen. The director depended on choosing popular actors and forgot about everything else. I think that his fatal mistake was choosing the setting of the movie to be in modern times. If he had decided that the script would go unchanged and retain the same events as the original play, then he might as well have preserved the setting. Yet he didn't and at the end everything was messed up. It is quite apparent that the problems that faced Romeo and Juliet cease to exist in modern times. First of all Romeo and Juliet come from extremely rich families, when they realized they were in love, couldn't just go to another Italian city or even buy two two hundred dollars plane tickets to Spain and forget about their families.	The film just doesn't present anything contra that solution. Maybe in the older days, some five hundred years ago, girls in Europe couldn't walk out easily out of their family's house, but I presume that his is not the case nowadays. Even if we made the hypothesis that Romeo and Juliet weren't "that smart", or if Juliet's family was the only traditional family in Europe and the events went on in the same sequence, when Romeo was banished couldn't she just go visit him like his church friend did and tell him about her plan?With all those up to date communication devices was the DHL the only choice to report such vital news? Also this banishment in a desert thing seems so stupid. Europe no longer applies this punishment and if it did, it wouldn't be free from security. They prevent people to walk out from cinemas at the middle of films, don't they have the ability to prevent people form walking out of their exiles. And this herbal 24 hour poison that Juliet had taken to make her seem dead, can it actually fool modern day medicine. Would they just take a person who seems breathless and bury him without carefully examining him. What makes matters worse is that she is presented as the daughter of one of the most powerful families, I mean; she should have been examined properly. As stupid as well was the loud monologue Juliet used to make to herself. Mad people are the only ones who talk to themselves. The director could have just transformed such loud quotations into thoughts. Maybe at the time of Shakespeare they didn't have that option, but now they certainly do. As I formerly mentioned mainly I am against the time setting of the film, because the world has changed a lot. But there are other things that were inappropriate for example the people who screamed at each other while holding guns. All I can say is that it is badly done movie. Too little effort was exerted to make it. It took away two sixteenth century family and put them in the inappropriate time and the result was devastating. Everything seemed freaky. The concept behind the Romeo and Juliet tragedy was not conveyed to me through that movie because everything seemed illogical. It certainly was a failure.