Just when it seemed there couldn’t possibly be another Romeo and Juliet adaptation, here comes Juliet & Romeo—a musical reimagining so tone-deaf it makes Baz Luhrmann’s take feel like Shakespeare in its purest form. Writer-director Timothy Scott Bogart reframes the iconic tragedy as a glossy, pop-scored love story, complete with modern dialogue, musical numbers, and a few big actors.
★★☆☆☆
Set in a glossy Verona circa 1301, Juliet & Romeo opens with a storybook-style prologue and a narrator who spells out the plot right away. Shakespeare’s original language is largely stripped away—only to reappear sporadically, often in jarring or unintentionally comic bursts. It’s a stylistic mismatch that sets the tone for what’s to come.
Juliet (Clara Rugaard) has just returned home from boarding school in France, only to fall for Romeo (Jamie Ward) at a bustling market beneath the moonlight. Neither realises the other’s identities—despite both wearing their rival families’ signature colours. From there the film hurtles through loosely assembled set-pieces, remixing and reordering events in ways that neither enhance the drama nor build any real tension.
Rugaard and Ward make for a sweet enough pairing—their chemistry is more chaste than electric, but at least they sell the sincerity. Yet this is often lost amid the film’s constant rush to get to the next ensemble song.
The music is both omnipresent and forgettable. Original songs by Evan Kidd Bogart and Justin Gray are embedded into every scene, often without narrative purpose. Autotuned to oblivion and lyrically thin, these numbers rarely add anything except runtime. Nearly every character is given a song, not because the story demands it, but seemingly because their agent insisted on it. Rebel Wilson (miscast as Juliet’s mother) belts out a hollow empowerment anthem, Dan Fogler hams it up with a campy lab-based number, and poor Jason Isaacs does his best as Lord Montague but is clearly above the material he has to work with. These moments feel less like narrative beats and more like contractual obligations.
The accompanying choreography—what little of it we can see through the rapid-fire editing—fails to elevate the material.
Still, there are flashes of effort. The Italian shooting locations add texture, and Dante Ferretti’s production design lends some authenticity to an otherwise artificial-feeling world. When the leads sing their ballads in chilly corridors and their breath fogs the air, there’s a brief sense of something real. But moments like that are rare and fleeting.
Tonally, the film lurches between fairytale whimsy and angsty teen drama, never quite finding its footing. Lines of dialogue are occasionally punctuated by magical sparkle sounds, only underlining the cheesiness of the score. And while there’s a clear attempt to bring the story to a younger audience—likely musical-loving preteens—it’s hard to say who this film is really for. Too shallow for adults, too uneven for kids, and too clumsy for Shakespeare fans, Juliet & Romeo falls into an awkward space between them all.
The Verdict
Coming so soon after a wave of sharper adaptations—from Rosaline to Broadway’s celebrated Jack Antonoff-scored version—this film feels like a missed opportunity. There’s the seed of a clever reinterpretation here, but it never blossoms. Instead, Juliet & Romeo plays like a two-hour music video in search of a story, a style, and a reason to exist. For all its superficial glitter, it lacks the two things Romeo and Juliet should have in abundance: passion and poetry. A plague on both its houses—and on your patience.
Words by Kieran Webb
Juliet & Romeo will be in UK Cinemas for one night only on 11th June
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