Just watched Private Romeo and I gotta say I was disappointed after all the positive comments & reviews.
I understood that the story was a modern take on the Romeo & Juliet story set in a boys' military academy. For me it just didn't work.
I tried to get behind the "gender blind" casting, a variation on "color blind" casting in which the audience pretends NOT to notice a the actors race and just goes with the character as written. For me this didn't work because the characters adhered so loosely to the characters as written.
The story is all about how two factions are brought to grief when a member of each faction kills themselves after becoming a couple.
In this version, I couldn't tell the factions apart or even if there really were any. There were no parental arranged marriages, no killing of cousins in duels, and even bigger departures from the story... but that would be telling!
I'm a big fan of restaging Shakespeare in other scenarios. West Side Story and Ran are great examples where "bending the Bard" actually added new and interesting aspects to an already classic tale, but this one added nothing and detracted a LOT. I saw all of my favorite speeches of the play marred and made less by this staging.
Also the production values were glaringly deficient in spots. Why stage a military drill scene without bothering to ensure uniform uniforms, and with so small a number of "cadets?"
This felt much less organic throughout than that Woody Allen movie where he took an already released Japanese movie and substituted his own dialogue.
The boys were pretty and there were moments where the actors managed to get my interest & empathy DESPITE the total lack of any help from the vehicle they were performing in.
It may well be me. There are a number of very positive reviews of this film by critics from The NY Times and The Village Voice et. al. but after seeing this I'm if some form of payola wasn't involved...
