Yes, Carlo Carlei‘s take on Romeo and Juliet does have a few things going for it – most notably, a stellar cast that includes Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet and Douglas Booth as Romeo, along with Paul Giamatti, Damian Lewis, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Stellan Skarsgard, and apparently Ed Westwick just for scenery-chewing funsies – but even the best cast in the world can’t avoid one major, glaring problem with this new version of Shakespeare’s classic.
Namely, that this one just seems utterly pointless. Carlei’s vision is a classic one – it doesn’t have the flash of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, or the revisionist fun of something like West Side Story - but it also doesn’t even attempt to improve upon the gold standard traditionalist take of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version. Why, exactly, is this being made now? Are kids today really in need of a just-barely-updated version of the film to watch during English class post-Shakespeare reading? Well, probably.
Enjoy some, well, totally mediocre delights with the first trailer for the new Romeo and Juliet after the break.
Romeo and Juliet will open in theaters sometime this fall. [ComingSoon]