you can still fap to her in private

I suspect most viewers' response to this latest in a long, long line of film adaptations of Romeo & Juliet will be determined by how much left-field originality they demand from it versus enjoying it on its own terms as a dead-ahead, unpretentious entertainment. The Bard's adolescent romantic tragedy, perhaps the most widely read of his plays, is no stranger to the cinema, and there are at least three iconic adaptations one can point to, from the one produced in the mid-1930s featuring Gone with the Wind's Leslie Howard as Romeo to the music-video indebted modern adaptation pairing Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio in the 1990s.

This new film, adapted (honored, shortened, altered, etc.) for the screen by the estimable Julian Fellowes, is an earnest and straightforward period-piece rendition of the play. Shot, in a neat and pleasant twist, on location in and around the beautiful Italian city of Verona, the film stars the brooding, almost too beautiful Douglas Booth as Romeo and, in her first major role since earning an Oscar nomination for her astounding performance in the 2010 version of True Grit, a charming Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet. Neither is a revelation, but both are more than capable and do convey a potent sense of youthful excitement and lust, particularly during the iconic early balcony sequence. (The camera lingers on Booth's otherworldly, perfectly sculpted face, and the film will no doubt inspire a few teenage girls to switch from Team Edward to Team Romeo.) A venerable ensemble cast lends the leads consistent and muscular aid. Best in show may be Paul Giamatti, a beacon of exhausted humanity as Friar Lawrence, whose civic-minded and optimistic plots turn out oh so wrong. One or two of the script's alternations and omissions land with a thud, but it is by and large a satisfying, if unadventurous, adaptation, and the technical credits, including the ornate period costuming, leave nothing to be desired.

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