I watched “Juliet & Romeo” in an empty theater on opening night, which felt fitting. It’s easy to pan writer and director Timothy Scott Bogart’s horrendous pop musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy. What’s harder to do is figure out why it was made in the first place.
Who did they think would be sitting in all those empty seats around me? With a rating of PG-13, the intended audience is ambiguous. The film feels a little too old for my 6-year-old daughter, but it doesn’t seem like something that any teen with access to streaming or social media would actually take the time to watch.
Why would they? Teens are obsessed with another franchise about star-crossed lovers: Prime Video’s “Culpa Mia.” (The trailer for the final installment has become the most-watched ever for an original streaming movie.) Last fall, their TikTok feeds were full of clips of Kit Connor in “Heartstopper” as Romeo doing a pull-up to hang off the bed (balcony) of his Juliet (Rachel Zegler) in Sam Gold’s Broadway adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet.” With much spicier forbidden romances and viral displays of devotion, they don’t need a flat reimagining of “Romeo and Juliet” set to a cringe playlist.
So, back to all those empty seats, who is this story for?
Bogart told ComingSoon that his version is supposed to be a historical reimagining of “Romeo & Juliet.” It begins with the opening of a Disney-like fairy tale book and a narrator providing the story’s context: It’s 1301 and “Italy was only an idea.” The Montagues and Capulets have a tenuous alignment to protect the future of Verona because Rome (aka the Pope) wants to take control of the city.
This is when Romeo (Jamie Ward) enters the frame in a market in Verona and almost immediately breaks out into one of the far too many and terribly timed pop songs that only serve to emphasize how much the actor looks like someone who would be in a boyband.
Apparently, the film is set to pop music because — obviously — people wouldn’t want a movie in iambic pentameter. (Bogart clearly missed the appeal of Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet.”)
“I remember asking my brother, ‘Why do you think Shakespeare did it in iambic pentameter?’ And so effortlessly, he just said, ‘Because that was the poetry of their time.’ That’s interesting,” Bogard said. “I said, ‘What’s the poetry of our time?’ and he said, ‘pop music.’”
If the movie had good pop songs, maybe it could have worked, maybe it would have made this reimagining feel fresh and worthy of not using iambic pentameter. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The film’s 15 songs written by Evan “Kidd” Bogart and Justin Gray are 15 too many. They also all sound exactly the same and have terribly direct lyrics like, “Why do they always call it falling in love/ When the last thing you’d ever want to do is fall?”
Fans of the original text will also probably be angered that this falling in love story takes place completely out of order. Instead of meeting at the Capulet’s ball, Romeo and Juliet (Clara Ruggard) meet at a fight between their families. They never learn each other’s names, but they run into each other again that same night when Juliet sneaks out of the castle to crowd surf at a makeshift bar in the village.
When they’re both trying to separately escape a family-related fight, they find themselves in the same alley and kiss to disguise their faces. It’s a poorly executed trope that occurs too quickly in the plot, ensuring that there is no time to develop a connection between the characters. Romeo isn’t even given the chance to long to be a glove upon Juliet’s hand or ask if his lips can do what hands do. Instead, their rushed kiss becomes one more reason “Juliet & Romeo” undermines everything that people care about in “Romeo & Juliet.”
For example, instead of including the “what’s in a name” speech, the movie repeatedly uses the first line as part of different exchanges, butchering each one.
The saccharine writing that replaces the classic dialogue in every scene is even worse. “I can’t tell if your poetry is prose,” Juliet says early in her relationship with Romeo, questioning the authenticity of his feelings. Who knows. It’s never quite clear why Romeo and Juliet are attracted to each other or are supposed to be “poetry” in a world of prose.
By the end of the movie, it’s obvious that the central storyline isn’t even the namesake couple who — spoiler alert — don’t die because of help from Friar Lawrence (Derek Jacobi) who literally rewrites history. Instead, the focus shifts in the final third of the movie to the geo-political history of Verona during this time period, and the film is supposed to be part of a three-part franchise that goes up to the birth of Italy and Europe.
This political focus pulls attention from the couple and makes the title “Juliet & Romeo” feel like a misnomer. Originally, Bogart says he called the film “Verona,” which makes a lot more sense given the political subplots. These include the Pope’s quest for control and the apothecary (Dan Fogler) using his potions to sneak Jews out of Verona.
All of these missteps do a disservice to the main actors who aren’t given much material to work with and the secondary characters who sing in the chorus but aren’t given much room for character development. This is especially true for Lady Capulet played by Rebel Wilson in her first mom role ever. It is a waste of talent that she never gets to exercise her comedic gifts to enhance the story.
From changing the plot in small and major ways to writing without iambic pentameter or classic lines to using poorly constructed pop music, “Juliet & Romeo” feels completely unaligned with its source at best and a disjointed disaster at worst. Also, like most movies now, the runtime is far too long for what the genre is. It clocks in at just over two hours.
However, like all tragedies, it isn’t all bad. The colorful renaissance costumes and Italian locations used for settings are great. These elements combined work well enough that if you condensed the entire movie into a 3-minute music video or perfume ad, it would be good, and it would also probably be something young people would want to watch a clip of on TikTok.
I don’t expect them to show up to see “Juliet & Romeo,” and I’d expect to see a lot more empty seats.
“Juliet & Romeo” is in theaters now.