Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Every time a film like this resurfaces online, you can tell exactly who's never sat through a Shakespeare play in their life. The complaints roll in: the acting is too big, the emotions too heightened, the whole thing too much. And I just want to grab people by the shoulders and say, yes. That's the point.

I'll be honest, I really like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet. Maybe nostalgia has something to do with it. GCSE English, cramming the text the night before an exam, watching this on a battered VHS copy because the teacher reckoned it'd help it sink in. It did. But going back to it now, it holds up better than I expected, and not purely for sentimental reasons.

What Luhrmann understood is that Shakespeare was never meant to be tasteful. The plays were written to be loud, visceral, emotionally exhausting affairs performed to rowdy crowds who weren't there for quiet subtlety. Transposing that energy into a neon-soaked, sun-drenched fever dream of a city, swapping swords for guns while keeping every word of the original text, is a genuinely bold creative decision. It should not work as well as it does. The fact that it largely does is a credit to how well Luhrmann committed to the chaos.

The performances are fine, and I mean that as actual praise rather than a backhanded compliment. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes sell the doomed lovers well enough. You believe the dizzy, reckless pull between them even when the style is threatening to swallow everything whole. But the real standout for me is John Leguizamo as Tybalt. He's electric. Coiled, dangerous, and totally at home in the heightened register the film demands. Every scene he's in crackles. It's the kind of supporting turn that makes you wish the character stuck around longer, which, given the play, he does not.

Yes, the style gets overwhelming at times. There are moments where Luhrmann piles on so much visual noise, so many quick cuts and garish colours and swooping camera moves, that the actual human story underneath gets a bit lost. Not every performance lands with the same confidence either. Some of the supporting cast struggle to find their footing between the Shakespearean text and the hyper-stylised world they've been dropped into. Those are fair criticisms and I'm not going to wave them away.

But here's the thing. I've seen people compare DiCaprio's early work across the decade and I'd say his Romeo stands up well alongside his other roles from the period. I covered The Beach a while back, which catches him at a slightly later, more confident point, but there's a raw quality to his Romeo that I find genuinely appealing. He's a kid playing at love and completely in over his head, which is exactly who Romeo is.

What the film does brilliantly, and what I think its detractors miss entirely, is function as a gateway. If you've never engaged with Shakespeare before, or if school put you off him for life, this is a way back in. The language stops feeling like an obstacle when it's being delivered by people in Hawaiian shirts on a Verona Beach that looks like Miami filtered through a telenovela. Suddenly the words start to make sense because the world around them is doing half the interpretive work for you.

Is it the definitive version of the play? No. Is it even Luhrmann's best work? Probably not. But as a fresh, daring swing at a story that could easily have felt exhausted and overdone, it absolutely delivers. It's bold, it's chaotic, it's almost aggressively 90s, and I wouldn't change much about it.

Three and a half stars.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 1996  | Watched: 2025-04-04

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Disney Plus
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Hulu · Cinemax Amazon Channel · HBO Max · Cinemax Apple TV channel
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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