Too much of everything

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The problem with Shakespeare and any adaptations like this one is that the modern viewer fails to become emotionally connected because the language used is so "unusual" and at times difficult to make sense of. If the language and dialogue used is NOT like REAL language that everyday people use, then NONE of the drama seems REAL enough to feel any real emotions. It's too obvious that the whole piece is STAGED and therefore UNREAL. An effective drama should seem real - like it's really happening or could have really happened just as it is depicted. This is why melodrama is NOT effective. Melodrama is overacting....effected speech and mannerisms. It's NOT REAL....and therefore the audience cannot become emotionally engaged. Having made this point....the actors were all good, young and cute and I would love to have seen them in a really good true to life romantic gay drama. But I absolutely loved the closing song, "You made me love you", a Judy Garland tribute to Clark Gable back in the 1930s.

Private Romeo is a wonderful experiment and another entry in the extensive library of films highlighting the timeless genius of William Shakespeare. It proves that Romeo and Juliet can be translated into almost any setting. As a movie, it is somewhat lacking. Shakespeare's play combines a perfect mix of romance, comedy and tragedy. Unfortunately, the movie only gets one of them right.The romance between Glenn Mangan (aka Juliet) and Sam Singleton (aka Romeo) is honest and believable. The actors deliver their lines as well or better than many other Shakespearean actors.But, with one exception, whatever comedy there is seems completely unintentional. The film is set in an all-boys military academy, so the lines normally spoken by female characters are instead spoken by men. Every time a person said "Juliet" or "Nurse" or "her" I was taken out of the movie and left to ponder the "experiment". Men referring to other men as females became funny after a while. Chris Bresky, who plays Omar Madsen (aka the Nurse), through no fault of his own, was often the source of this unintentional comedy. But he also has the one genuinely funny scene when he returns to Juliet to deliver Romeo's answer to Juliet's question regarding marriage. It is also one of my favorite scenes in Shakespeare's play and Bresky does it beautifully.But the movie really goes off the rails as a tragedy. In Shakespeare's original, tension is established by two warring families who will only declare peace when they each lose a child. None of this happens in the movie. Only eight students are left behind at the academy, and two of them, Ken Lee (aka the Prince) and Adam Hersh (aka Friar Laurence), are not part of either "family". It's hard to understand the tension among the other six students. Romeo and Juliet are both gay, and when they "come out" during the party, no one seems to be particularly homophobic. Carlos Moreno (aka Tybalt) is upset, but it's unclear why. Is it because they're gay? From different social classes? From different battalions? The battle between the two sides is never clearly defined and we are left to wonder what the problem is.Romeo and Juliet is a play about coincidences. Romeo goes to the party after being shown the guest list and seeing Rosaline's name. He stumbles over the wall just in time to see Juliet emerge on the balcony. He happens upon Mercutio and Tybalt in the midst of a heated argument. Friar Laurence's letter to Romeo in Mantua gets delayed. Romeo drinks the poison only moments before Juliet awakens. And the Friar arrives at the tomb too late to save Romeo and leaves too early to save Juliet. Each of these coincidences leads inexorably to the play's tragic conclusion.But no one dies in the movie, so the coincidences, such as they are, are meaningless. Since there is no tension between two warring tribes, the "deaths" of the two protagonists are meaningless. And what did their "deaths" accomplish? Upon awakening, Romeo and Juliet are in the exact same situation they were when they "died". Nothing gets resolved and no one is changed.The movie is a fine experiment, but I can't recommend it.On a final note, the acting is superb with kudos to everyone. Hale Appleman (aka Mercutio) is outstanding, and I hope to see him in other movies in the future.

I LOVE this movie. I loved it the first time I watched it, and I've loved it even more each of the three times I've watched it since then; it continues to astonish me.The adaptation of Romeo and Juliet to an all-boys' military academy is very effective, and Seth Numrich (Sam/Romeo) and Matt Doyle (Glenn/Juliet) have the most electrifyingly romantic scenes I've seen in a long time - maybe ever. Hale Appleman (Josh/Mercutio) is riveting, the best actor in a very gifted cast (all of whom are young New York theatre actors who had prior experience with Shakespeare on stage).Familiarity with Romeo and Juliet will help a lot in following the fast-moving and sometimes chaotic story, and multiple viewings are well worth the time and effort.Many people who don't like Private Romeo just don't like Shakespeare, which is understandable in a generation raised on reality TV and crap like Avatar and the superhero/action movie that gets remade under a different title several times every year.At the opposite end of the spectrum, serious devotees of Shakespeare may have a problem with the liberties taken, not only in the male Juliet but in the slightly changed ending; but they cannot fault the amazing spirit of this movie - Shakespeare would be writing an even more glowing review if he were here. For people who love Shakespeare but are okay with free adaptations and low budgets, this is about as good as it gets. Even intelligent straight people may like it.The "balcony" scene is especially glorious, the most perfect mating of language and feeling I have ever seen; but all four or five of their love scenes are revelations. I wish I had a hundred stars to lavish on this most excellent little movie.(People who see elements of the defunct "don't ask - don't tell" policy of the US military are projecting their own issues onto the movie, which contains not even the slightest hint of homophobia. The fact that both the lovers are male is in no way the cause of any conflict in Private Romeo. Somewhat as in Shakespeare, it's a rivalry between cliques in the school and has nothing whatsoever to do with the sex of the lovers.)

I have a couple of pet hates when it comes to Shakespeare: 1. Forced constructs (a lá Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It set in feudal Japan - WTF!?!) 2. Americans (I know it is harsh but I have yet to see an American production that I've not cringed at - Did you see Ethan Hawke in Hamlet?) And then along comes Private Romeo to force a group of American military cadets into Romeo and Juliet.Shakespeare, forced context, Americans.Shakespeare, forced military academy context, hot semi-naked Americans.So I went. I was unprepared. The performances here completely disarmed me. The cast, led by (Seth Numrich - incidentally, Julliard's youngest ever drama student) is phenomenal. Their command of Shakespeare's words is masterful, finding the perfect balance between the flow of natural dialogue and the meter of the verse.Hale Appleman is especially good as Mercutio, and he relishes the early scenes, absolutely smashing the Queen Mab speech. Chris Bresky, too, who takes on the nurse's role has a lot of fun with his role, aided by some clever set up. But, in truth, it is hard to fault anyone in the cast.And the context? That's a bit more tricky.The film kicks off with the students doing a read through of Romeo and Juliet in their class. Thankfully, Brown moves away from the standard 'lives mirror performance' format, as the cadets start to slip into verse with little warning. The military academy works as a setting because the action that is taking place isn't strictly 'Romeo and Juliet'. Shakespeare's dialogue is used to accentuate the action rather than drive it. It soon becomes clear that the masked ball is not going to be a masked ball and that daughters are not going to be girls. Importantly, there are no rival houses, they are mentioned but they are not the cause of the tragedy here, that role is taken up by the undercurrent of homophobia and standard high school pack mentality.If you accept this construct then the world of Private Romeo maintains a concrete internal logic. The cadets can change roles because the speech is more important than the character. Director Alan Brown cleverly signals character changes by flashing back to the classroom scene, re-introducing the boys in the new role.Coming to the film with a solid grasp of the play will certainly benefit. Brown has pared the play back to an extremely fast moving 98 minutes and he has used many techniques to keep the pace moving. Characters are excised or collapsed into single characters, actors double up on roles, and whole plot lines are removed or altered. This is nothing new in producing Shakespeare but it is certainly less common producing his works for the screen.SPOILERS I won't deny that Brown has taken some liberties with the play. The tweaks that Baz Lurhmann made in his excellent 1996 version have been taken a step further here, with both the boys surviving. I didn't find this as jarring as I would have expected. Following on from Tybalt and Mercutio's fight (where neither die) the altered ending maintains the relationship between the traditional play and the play on the screen. Brown's decision also sidestepped the propensity of gays to die at the end of films, a comment in itself.END SSPOILERS There are of course choices that didn't work especially well; a series of lip-synced YouTube videos filmed by the cadets were effective but oddly placed and a song by 'Juliet' over the films credits needs to be hacked off the end (and will be once it reaches my DVD-r).Private Romeo is a fluid, astonishingly acted and relevant addition to the library of 'Romeo and Juliet' on film. Brown's film can sit proudly next to Zeffirelli and Lurhmann as an adaptation that has captured the true beauty of the text and adolescent love.Do not miss!