Product: Romeo and Juliet [Region 2] (1968)
Rating: 2.0
High school drama.
Bloated 1968 version of Shakespeare's tale of star-crossed lovers. Despite the incredibly expensive production design, despite the authentic costumes and locales, despite the doubtless much-rehearsed sword-duel between Leonard Whiting and Michael York, despite the then-relevant echoes of youth counterculture, the movie remains reminiscent of a Cliffs Notes Shakespeare put on by your local high school. In one respect it's refreshing to see actual teenagers play the roles: the old familiar lines in the text seem almost new, as spoken by Whiting and Olivia Hussey, probably because the lines weren't so old or familiar to them. But that finally doesn't compensate for the fact that as actors they're simply too young to handle the verse. Zeffirelli tried to put as much realism, emotional and pictorial, as possible into his movie -- but he probably should've asked himself whether that very realism defeated the whole purpose of the play by Shakespeare.