This is not a good film let alone a not so bad version of Romeo and Juliet. The whole enterprise is pretty, but irredeemably flat. Douglas Booth looks like a renaissance beauty, while Hailee Steinfeld just looks like the girl next door, but even allowing for this disparity, they both speak their lines as if they were reading round in an English class : no indication that they felt the passion or even understood the lines (although one supposes that they may well have done). There is therefore, zero chemistry between the two hapless actors, which is the death knell for any story of passion.
Much is made of Fellowes' script (most of it bad). The thing is, it's an uneasy mixture that works neither as version of Shakespeare, nor as its own version. Fellowes might have received more respect had he gone full out to re-conceive the dialogue in quasi-medieval terms, but he obviously lacked the nerve. The directorial choices didn't help either : in the Zefferelli version, Romeo's eyes are following Rosalind when there is a parting of the dancers and Juliet is revealed in her full height and beauty in a stunning red dress, wearing no mask. In this version, we see a few hints of a masked Juliet, with no visual impact. Therefore, the poetic line "it seems that she hangs from the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear" is stupid, because he can't even see her properly in order to make such a judgement, particularly as Steinfeld is not in the same league as the jewel-like Hussey. Hussey and Whiting both outdo these two leads in the clarity and urgency of their delivery. The famous misunderstood word "wherefore" in the balcony scene, which means "WHY are you Romeo?" which then leads to the questioning of how we name things (What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet") is actually delivered by Seinfeld as if Juliet IS saying "Where are you Romeo?" and the following musing not a logical extension of that incorrect idea.
The extra details add nothing to the story (the jousting for example) and just muddy things unnecessarily. The fight scenes lack the messy confusion that such a brawl would be (Zefferelli got that right again) leading to a less immediate and more artificial effect. The fact that a lot of this was shot in Verona means absolutely nothing if you are not engaged. I weep every time I watch the Zefferelli version. This one just bored me. A botched job.
Much is made of Fellowes' script (most of it bad). The thing is, it's an uneasy mixture that works neither as version of Shakespeare, nor as its own version. Fellowes might have received more respect had he gone full out to re-conceive the dialogue in quasi-medieval terms, but he obviously lacked the nerve. The directorial choices didn't help either : in the Zefferelli version, Romeo's eyes are following Rosalind when there is a parting of the dancers and Juliet is revealed in her full height and beauty in a stunning red dress, wearing no mask. In this version, we see a few hints of a masked Juliet, with no visual impact. Therefore, the poetic line "it seems that she hangs from the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear" is stupid, because he can't even see her properly in order to make such a judgement, particularly as Steinfeld is not in the same league as the jewel-like Hussey. Hussey and Whiting both outdo these two leads in the clarity and urgency of their delivery. The famous misunderstood word "wherefore" in the balcony scene, which means "WHY are you Romeo?" which then leads to the questioning of how we name things (What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet") is actually delivered by Seinfeld as if Juliet IS saying "Where are you Romeo?" and the following musing not a logical extension of that incorrect idea.
The extra details add nothing to the story (the jousting for example) and just muddy things unnecessarily. The fight scenes lack the messy confusion that such a brawl would be (Zefferelli got that right again) leading to a less immediate and more artificial effect. The fact that a lot of this was shot in Verona means absolutely nothing if you are not engaged. I weep every time I watch the Zefferelli version. This one just bored me. A botched job.