PlatinumRead Just so...so bad

Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

ohlabtechguy 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.

hughman55 You can not order the pre-fix menu at a 5 star restaurant and have delivered to your table a burger and fries. Cold rubbery fries. The concept of this film is enticing. The execution was not so successful. For as many liberties as were taken with Shakespeare's masterpiece one simple and useful one, would have been to change "Juliet" to "Julien". You wouldn't even have had to ruin the title to do this. Because the actor playing "Juliet" was a man, there seemed to be a concerted effort to not weaken, feminize, or subdue his demeanor. This produced a complete lack of polarity, or Ying and Yang, in the relationship which rendered the romance impotent. And so you have a very sincere attempt at a "Romeo and Juliet" that is devoid of tectonic passion between the two main characters. And they don't die in the end. This project came across, even at it's best moments, more as an open reading of the play than a rendering of what it in reality truly is, the greatest love story ever written. There are some excellent performances in this film. Josh Neff as Mercutio/Capulet, Adam Barrie as Friar Lawrence, Omar Madsen as the nurse, were powerful at moments when allowed by the direction. The actors for the title characters seemed hamstrung by either misdirection or unsuitability for the roles. In the end it didn't even matter that they didn't die tragically because there was no great loss of love. I'm not even sure that they survived to love at all. They seemed drawn to one another. That's not sufficient for a rendering of a Shakespeare classic on the margins of society. I think this could have been really amazing. But when Romeo and Juliet are not driven to defy everything in their lives for their love, their complete and consuming love is not battered by tragedy and death, and they do not die unnecessarily and tragically at the end, I'm really not sure what's left. It seemed here, not much.

VikenMekhtarian I am but 5 minutes Private Romeo watching and find myself wholly enthralled! There is true inspiration and crafty artists at work here... I feel I have hit upon a Jewel of the Bard. I will, a full review, compose later Anon! Alas, IMDb does not permit my premature prose of this work of fantastic marriage. I must twice five lines of words write before the auditor will allow a go. A promise I leave here to fill these blank boxes with words of wonder. To honor the integrity of this site, I will complete the rest of the review in quick verse, only to be revisited shortly with well paced praise. Why you ask I praise so highly a piece I have hardly held? When what you seek is true beauty in the art form, you need be but blind to not see the essence of that beauty which flares from this film, even if shadows on the wall is all you are treated to. This is Romeo and Juliet told in verse, in towels, in locker rooms and English classrooms, at a military academy for a few fair lass' in love. The script is superb and the words are Shakespeare - I don't want it to end

walypala 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!