This true love between two opposing families will make you think twice about ‘Love at First Sight’. By Taylor

Everybody wants to believe in love at first sight, but nobody can find true love at just a glance. Baz Luhrmann succeeded at accurately portraying the true love that two youngsters from opposing families found in the Shakespearian play Romeo & Juliet. While watching the 1996 version of this love story, it came to my interest to write my opinion on it.

Basically, Baz Luhrmann wanted to portray the love of between Romeo and Juliet in a different setting. The 1996 version of the Shakespearian play takes place in Verona, Italy, but is filmed in Miami, Florida.

I find that the actors were better in this version, Leonardo DiCaprio was a much better actor at playing the role of Romeo than Leonard Whiting. Claire Danes, on the other hand, wasn’t as good as Olivia Hussey in the 1968 version of Romeo & Juliet.

Baz Luhrmann changed a lot of important scenes in the play to make it more up to date. For example, the play takes place in the 1990`s, instead of swords, they actors used guns.  For transportation, they used cars instead of horses. This in my opinion ruined the old-time ambiance of the timeframe.  Although, in the 1996 version of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Leonardo DiCaprio was a much better actor than Leonard Whiting. Or at least he’s more physically attractive.

What I learned during this movie is that love at first sight might possibly exist. Also, in this Shakespearian play the two opposing families come together for their children. I personally think that by watching this movie, people will learn how to have respect for others and their families. This play would be suited for people who like romance but also like fight scenes.

I would recommend this movie to viewers over the age of 13 for the reason that there are scenes of violence and people who die, and for those reasons, the MPAA rating I give this movie would be PG-13. To conclude, this movie is good, it attracted me with the different scenery and actors, but also because the plot line was very moving, and it wasn’t slow at the beginning.

3 out of 5 Jewels.