Radical, but perhaps not radical enough?

Rating: 5/10 (28 January 2000)

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S ROMEO & JULIET
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1 (Panavision)
Sound formats: Dolby Digital / DTS / SDDS
With its contemporary setting and rough, insistent visuals, Baz Luhrmann's reinterpretation of "Romeo and Juliet" adds a very 90s spin to the Bard's tale, targeting the youth market (notoriously disenchanted with the works of Shakespeare) with an aggressive, in-yer-face style. As such, the film is hip and sexy, and Old Bill's yarn has much to offer, but while Claire Danes' Juliet is the very picture of grace and innocence, Leonardo di Caprio - undoubtedly a fine young actor - seems out of place as Romeo, and he's upstaged in the good looks department by Paul Rudd as Paris. There's a show-stopping dance number (part of a drug-induced hallucination) at the masked ball where the two lovers first meet, and the second half of the film is powered by a raw emotional intensity, but a truly radical revision of the play might have involved the scrapping of Shakespeare's text altogether and the substitution of 90s dialogue to match the visuals.