Complete waste of time.

Rating: 2/10 (5 October 2002)

The first time I saw this I switched it off fifteen minutes in - the borrowed lines from Shakespeare and the laughable and wince-inducing attempts at humour are off-putting to say the least. Being forced through a sitting (having sworn never to attempt a viewing again) I found this to be tedious and lacking in plot and imagination. Think Romeo and Juliet rehashed, badly. The only highlights were of course, Judi Dench and occasionally Geoffrey Rush as the bumbling theatre owner. Oscar-winning indeed - must have been a film drought that year. Spend your time watching Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet instead.