Juliet & Romeo (2025)
Directed by: Timothy Scott Bogart
Premise: A musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. In 14th century Italy, rival families vie for control of the city of Verona. Their teenage children (Clara Rugaard and Jamie Ward) fall in love.
What Works: Juliet & Romeo has impressive production design. Musical films often have to resolve a tension between looking naturalistic and creating a space for the song and dance numbers. The theatrical aspects of movie musicals often look artificial and destroy the illusion of the film. The makers of Juliet & Romeo create a self-contained world that works for this story. The settings and costumes aren’t necessarily realistic but they do have a naturalistic and credible look that creates a coherent visual style. This version of Romeo and Juliet eschews Shakespeare’s dialogue and changes aspects of the story. While the results are mixed, one of the filmmakers’ better choices is bringing forward the historical context. Verona was an independent city at this time but outside powers scheme to annex the community. That gives greater significance to the conflict between the Capulets and the Montagues and the consequences of Romeo and Juliet’s love affair. As part of this focus, the moviemakers bring forward the friar (Derek Jacobi). His relationship with a local chemist (Dan Fogler) is among the movie’s better innovations.
What Doesn’t: There is a tension between Juliet and Romeo’s dramatic style and its bid for historical context. The look of the movie isn’t going for realism or historical accuracy and the dialogue and music are very contemporary. The style clashes with the attempt to reimagine this story as a historical drama. Juliet & Romeo is a musical with the actors singing pop love songs. Most of the music is bland and unmemorable. The filmmaking itself is not particularly musical either. There’s not much rhythm to the set pieces which are sometimes awkward. The dullness of the music is indicative of Juliet & Romeo’s fatal flaw: the film’s utter dearth of passion. Actors Clara Rugaard and Jamie Ward have no romantic chemistry. This story is about the intensity of teenage love. Romeo and Juliet would rather die than live without one another but there is no sense of that consuming desire. The filmmaker’s aversion to heartache and pain, as evidenced by the mediocre songs and hollow love affair, reaches its logical conclusion in the ending which rewrites the climax. In an effort to give Romeo and Juliet a happy ending, the filmmakers gut the story of what made it interesting and memorable in the first place.
Bottom Line: Juliet & Romeo plays like a book report written by someone who didn’t understand and maybe didn’t even read the source material. Some of its innovations are interesting but others are misjudged and a few are disastrous. Ultimately, this is a love story without passion and a musical with mediocre songs.
Episode: #1048 (May 18, 2025)