Told entirely through social media and smartphone screens, this bold adaptation of Romeo and Juliet reinvents the world’s most enduring love story with style and lyricism, with black and brown youth at the heart of it all.
Camaron Engels
Romeo
Francesca Noel
Juliet
RJ Cyler
Benvolio
Siddiq Saunderson
Mercutio
Diego Tinoco
Tybalt
David Zayas
Fernando Capulet
Dakota Shapiro
Paris
Moe Irvin
Alcide Montague
María Gabriela de Faría
Nancy
Russell Hornsby
Captain Prince
DeShawn Cavanaugh
Abram
Denise Dorado
Lady Capulet
Jean Elie
Taz
Emilio Garcia-Sanchez
Sampson
Jaden Joyner
Young Romeo
Jacob Ming-Trent
Lawrence
Eric M. Myrick
Young Alcide
Matias Ponce
Young Fernando
Ricky Russert
Gregory
Director, Writer
Carey Williams
Theatre Play
William Shakespeare
Writer
Rickie Castaneda
Writer
Alexey Sobolev
March 9, 2021
4
The classic Romeo and Juliet tale is given a modern spin in “R#J,” an inventive but irritating film from director Carey Williams. The movie is too drawn-out (especially the painfully prolonged ending), and the gimmick of telling the story entirely through social media and smartphone screens doesn’t take long to become annoying.
You know the plot of the world’s most famous love story, and the film faithfully follows the original work of literature. A war is brewing between the Montagues and the Capulets, and the younger residents of Verona are using their phones to document it all. This leads to a head-spinning series of Instagram posts, text messages that come fast and furious, FaceTime calls, chats, selfies, GIFs, and Spotify playlists that score the action. The characters speak in a manner that blends the formal with the casual, reciting their lines in iambic pentameter that is a mix of Shakespearean language and modern slang.
Williams has assembled an original, thorough vision with a technological spin for his version of the story, and it’s fun to see the methods in which he updates this highly creative retelling. He finds super inventive ways to tie the story into a modern setting, but the flashes of brilliance are offset by plenty of moments of annoyance. This would have worked far better as a short film.
The film is experimental in nature, and some of the ideas are extremely disturbing (like live streaming suicides on YouTube). It’s cringey in parts, but “R#J” is a cool multicultural update on Shakespeare’s original work, and I can appreciate what the filmmaker is trying to do here.
By: Louisa Moore
Status:
Released
Original Language:
English
Budget:
$0.00
Revenue:
$0.00