Oh, come on ... it wasn't completely worthless.

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 1999)

Modern adaptations of Shakespeare are all the rage, of course, and they're always a big gamble - in the attempt to communicate the "timelessness" of Shakespeare's plays, one can wind up with something all the more dated and forgettable. This is probably along those lines, but it's not without charm.
I seem to be one of the few not disturbed by the present-day setting. If there was one thing this movie actually did very well, it was to effectively grasp, perhaps by accident, the emotional motif of Romeo & Juliet and place it in the present day. The decadence and schlocky absurdity of all the scenery is actually quite consistent with the feel of the play.
Personally, I'm not sure what to make of it. Perhaps Baz Luhrmann realized that most of the actors under 30 didn't know what they were doing, and decided to distract from it with his camerawork. If you want to see Romeo & Juliet, this is most certainly not the version to see - the acting is generally horrid and the script takes some highly questionable, er, "liberties". But it's still an interesting little effort somehow.