Monday, February 7, 2011

Romeo & Juliet (yeah its a play and i'm breaking the rules already, sue me) 1/5


Note: I realize this is kind of a long review, but count yourselves lucky, this is an abridged version my original was nearly 5 pages long. Also this gets a 1 star out of 5 simply because I couldn’t find a JPEG online for 0 stars.
I hate Romeo & Juliet, I know I’m one of about five people in the country I who feel this way, but seriously the thing is just a steaming pile of crap! Now don’t get me wrong I love Shakespeare, Hamlet is probably the best tragedy of all time, but I honestly believe he was higher than a 60s Berkeley student when he wrote Romeo & Juliet. Furthermore, the play’s plot is the kind angsty teen drama bull one would expect from Stephanie Meyers, not the “Immortal Bard”
First on my list of things I hate about Romeo & Juliet is its complete lack of realism. Let’s look at the major plot defects: first we have two idiotic 13 year old kids who think hormones and teenage angst is equivalent to love, a tragic ending caused by a monk and a plague placed with the kind of convenience one usually only see in 90s sitcoms, and, to top it all off, the Capulets and Montagues, who have loathed each other for generations, suddenly decide to be friends in a bull-shit kum ba yah ending that even Disney wouldn’t expect their audience to swallow.
Problem number two, in any Shakespeare play the audience can predict by the end of the first act if it’s a comedy or a tragedy because Shakespeare has a strict storytelling pattern;  Romeo & Juliet, however, breaks the pattern. Judging by the first two and half acts Romeo & Juliet should be a comedy, but just as the audience is preparing for a lovely ending where in everyone gets married and lives happily ever after, the play takes a hard left turn into death-ville.
Finally, Romeo & Juliet is Shakespeare’s most famous play which is an insult to all his other actually good plays. The fact that every American school kid is forced to read Romeo & Juliet is most likely directly responsible for America’s lack of interest in Shakespeare; honestly, if I hadn’t already seen and read several other Shakespeare plays before reading Romeo & Juliet, I would’ve written off good old Billy completely. So boys and girls if you haven’t read Edward & Be—I mean Romeo & Juliet yet, don’t and if you have, try to erase it from your memory and replace it with The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, or one of Shakespeare’s other actually decent plays.

3 comments:

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  2. Katie,

    I love your posts. You have an honest way of writing that makes me feel comfortable reading it because your writing is real- not sugar-coated.

    I've never thought of Romeo and Juliet in the way you looked at it, but it's always nice hearing a new perspective. I love all the comparisons you make in your writing- 90's sitcoms, high as a 60's berkeley student, etc. I'm going to keep reading your posts for sure.

    Lisa

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