Romeo and Juliet - film review

The score to Julian Fellowes' adaptation is outstandingly bad. It puts the vapid acting of the leads, clumsy use of slo-mo and Stellan Skarsgard's dodgy accent quite into the shade. On the plus side, the real-life, Veronese back-drops are awesome
11 October 2013

Whilst watching Julian "Downton Abbey" Fellowes' adaptation of this rather famous Shakespeare play, I wrote in my notes, "silly piano", "mad piano", "ridiculous piano!!!" Let me explain. Carlos Carlei's film has many faults, but the score is outstandingly bad. It puts the vapid acting of the leads, clumsy use of slo-mo and Stellan Skarsgard's dodgy accent quite into the shade.

Fellowes, for his part, has taken a lot of the wit out of the soliloquies, and introduced some wince-inducing anachronisms (the nurse to Juliet: “I must say, you have good taste in men”). But mostly he just underwhelms. As Juliet, 15 year old Hailee Steinfeld (the over-rated child star of True Grit) races through most of her lines. Who cares what words are getting trodden underfoot?

On the plus side, the real-life, Veronese back-drops are awesome. And the male cast are as beautiful as the day. Douglas Booth (Romeo), Ed Westwick (Tybalt), Christian Cooke (Mercutio) and Kodi Smit-McPhee (Benvolio) resemble photogenic wolf pups, or, if you want to get really high-falutin' about it, Rossetti's Proserphine. All those luscious eye-brows. All those bee-stung lips. Was the ghost of Derek Jarman in charge of casting, perhaps?

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in