Tacky and obnoxious

Rating: 1/10 (13 July 2011)

The only thing that I can say about Baz Lurhmann as a director is that he is really good at adapting a classic story and making it incredibly tacky.
Perhaps my hatred for unnecessary modernizations of classics has overtaken my opinions, but there is no reason to place a Shakespeararean play and put it in a modern setting unless it's going to be put in some use or say something different from other adaptations. Shakespeare Retold did so and that was why that series worked, but the only reason this movie seems to exist is to appeal to a more shallow audience without any intellectual value whatsoever.
What I especially hate about this adaptation is not only how it pays more attention to the romance than it should do the feud between the families, but none of the actors look like they know what they were saying. Lurhmann certainly doesn't, which is made clear when he twists Mercutio's Queen Mab speech from a monologue about the challenges and temptations of lovers to a speech about drugs. If a director can't understand Shakespeare, or even has the nerve to twist his poetry that way, then he shouldn't take on that play in the first place.
The actors are vapid, the direction is awful, the editing is terrible, the setting is tacky beyond belief, it's unnecessary and it's just plain insulting to Shakespeare's text.
My only hope is that Baz Lurhmann pays more attention in English class before he takes on another classic. In fact, he should just avoid classics and save him a shred of dignity.