And yet, the director always knows exactly when to relent his barrelling dynamism.
It is a sensory overload of a movie from a film-maker now renowned for such excess – Luhrmann’s follow-up to R+J would be the similarly go-for-broke Moulin Rouge. Edited with the frantic energy of a sugar-high toddler, it zips along at adrenalin-jolting speed, stopping off to observe drug-fuelled drag performances and frenzied car chases, petrol-station gun fights and rowdy snooker games.
Romeo + Juliet is fresh, it’s original, it’s alive. The otherwise tricky Elizabethan dialogue is never an impediment to understanding because the director visualises the action so meticulously from the outset, denoting the characters and their relationships to one another with on-screen text, and doubling back to deliver the opening sonnet more slowly for a second time to ensure we have fully grasped the story beats before launching us into the narrative.
He creates an eye-popping, neon-washed world where swords become guns, prologists become TV newsreaders and messengers are Fedex delivery drivers. Luhrmann translates Romeo & Juliet for the MTV generation and updates its outmoded iconography, thereby giving himself space to situate the 400-year-old play firmly in the here and now. He is entitled to his opinion, of course, but I’d venture that this version was not intended for him (and, indeed, the fact that the movie went on to snag the number-one spot at the US box office upon release proves that it carried plenty of appeal to other audiences). In his two-star review, the film journalist Roger Ebert sniffed that “this production was a very bad idea” and it would “dismay any lover of Shakespeare”. This outré, punk approach to the 16th-century tragedy was largely met with critical derision in 1996.
Referenced in Halloween costumes and Euphoria episodes to this day, his fizzing, sparking, pistol-toting adaptation blazed across our screens and blasted the dust off Shakespeare. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, which turns 25 this month, was a cultural reset before the term was popularised, indelibly printing its stamp on our collective imaginations. Though the film is visually modern, the bard's dialogue remains." 'Romeo + Juliet' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on HBO Now, HBO Max, Spectrum On Demand, DIRECTV, Apple iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Video, Microsoft Store, Redbox, AMC on Demand, Google Play Movies, and YouTube. What, so now you want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "In director Baz Luhrmann's contemporary take on William Shakespeare's classic tragedy, the Montagues and Capulets have moved their ongoing feud to the sweltering suburb of Verona Beach, where Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly wed. Released November 1st, 1996, 'Romeo + Juliet' stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, Jesse Bradford, Vondie Curtis-Hall The PG-13 movie has a runtime of about 2 hr, and received a user score of 68 (out of 100) on TMDb, which put together reviews from 4,191 respected users.
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