Thou may enjoy thy film, but I won't.

Rating: 6/10 (23 March 2017)

Based on the original screenplay by William Shakespeare, Romeo + Juliet attempts to take more of a modern approach to the film, but in my opinion fails to deliver. Don't get me wrong, some aspects of the film were at most "meh", but I found the film bizarre and also scrappily put together. Don't get me wrong people will still find enjoyment out of this film depending on their taste, but I just found this to be a somewhat weak comedy with a few scenes of romance.
The plot: very similar if not just an adaptation of the original screenplay. There isn't much to say here, apart from the fact that they more or less used all the original lines from Shakespeare's classic. This is very interesting and it's nice that they experimented with this, despite making the film even more confusing as I constantly try to decide whether this film is based in the past or the present.
The characters seem to be relatively corny and while they have their dialog to characterize them which actually lets them stand out from the minor characters, they also have a sort of comedic twist to them (seriously how is this not a comedy?). A good example of this is Mercutio. At the start of the film, he was wearing bizarre clothes, and I'm not joking when I say that I thought his character was supposed to be a reference to how women didn't act in Shakespearian times, as it was thought to be "unladylike". The characters themselves were executed relatively fine; nothing more, nothing less.
The music used a blend of classic songs with more late 90s songs. While this was an interesting mix, this somehow worked. With the tone of the film being fairly light hearted and cheesier then dark and edgy on some scenes, the songs worked to make it feel like a parody of Romeo and Juliet. I still don't know if it is a parody or not, but I can't be bothered to research it.
Overall, this film was decent at most and also bizarre and annoying at most. At the end I kept screaming "JUST LOOK DOWN ROMEO OH MY GOD", before Romeo was about to poison himself. I found this moment unrealistic, as if you're going to show the character die, don't make them start to wake up in that moment and instead wake up as Romeo is dying, unless this was intentional of course, so good job on that. Overall, I found this film at most funny and at least corny. I'd give this film a 6/10.