Romeo and Juliet

The costumes and everything else in the film--the photography, the music, above all Shakespeare's language--is so voluptuous, so sensuous. Read full review

This decorous production brought Shakespeare’s rapture of first love to timeless life — and death — with achingly sensitive performances in a voluptuous period re-creation. Read full review

This has elegance, vigour and charm. Read full review

A lovely, sensitive, friendly popularization of the play. Read full review

It's a visually stunning adaptation with much action, broad humor, and eroticism. Read full review

Leonard Whiting, 17, and Olivia Hussey, 16, look right: tender and beautiful. And, as carefully coached, filmed and edited, they perform creditably. [09 Apr 1999]

Mostly it remains enjoyable for its colour and visual flair. Danilo Donati's costumes are, as usual, breathtaking. Read full review

The whole thing sinks on the shoulders of its pretty teen stars (Hussey and Whiting), who exhibit all the raw talent and sensuality of bit players in some bad Spanish soap. Read full review

Rarely will audiences be moved to throat-gulping by the plight of the young couple. For all Hussey’s prettiness and Whiting’s shy charm it is clear that they do not understand one tenth of the meaning of their lines and it is a drawback from which the film cannot recover. Read full review

Garish and goopy—a kind of West Side Story reworked into its original form. Read full review

Franco Zeffirelli's reputation as a popularizer of Shakespeare stems from this gusty swirl of a 1968 production built around - and aimed at - teens. The uncomprehending looks on the faces of Leonard Whiting's Romeo and Olivia Hussey's Juliet only increase the film's demographic pull, as poetry is replaced with prettiness. [18 Jan 1991, p.32p]

The one element Zeffirelli removes that the other bowdlerizers also removed is Shakespeare's language. Only about half the play is left, and what's there doesn't build up the rhythm of a poetic drama. Heard in isolated fragments, the lines just seem a funny way of talking that is hard to understand.