Juliet & Romeo

As he did with “Spinning Gold,” based on his father’s career in music, writer/director Timothy Scott Bogart has Temu-ed a great story and it is barely watchable. This time, it is Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” which he has renamed “Juliet & Romeo,” made some changes to the characters and storyline, reworked the dialogue so instead of exquisite poetry in iambic pentameter it’s more like college kids exchanging texts.

However, the fabulous production design by the brilliant Dante Ferretti and beautiful cinematography by Byron Werner are top-notch and the sword fights are ably staged. Oh, and this is a musical, with pop torch songs by Evan Kidd Bogart, who is a producer of the film, the composer of Beyonce’s hit, “Halo,” and Timothy Scott Bogart’s brother.

It isn’t as though we don’t already have a straightforward but artistic version in Franco Zeffirellis version with teenagers playing the young lovers and a sublime version with 20th century flair but Shakespeare’s language, in Baz Luhrman’s “Romeo + Juliet,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

This version begins a scene-setting intro that lets us know immediately what’s in store. Not just because we see the tragic couple dead before the story flashes back to three days earlier, but because Shakespeare’s

Two households, both alike in dignity
 (In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
 From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
 Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
 From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
 A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
 Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
 Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.

becomes an “in the last episode”-style update somewhere between Shakespeare and the crawl at the beginning of “The Phantom Menace.”

We get a few Shakespearean crumbs just to remind us of what we’re missing. There are a couple of references to “what’s in a name,” and one to “all’s well that ends well.” But most of the dialogue is at the level of “I’m okay,” “You’re a great kisser,” and the repeated song lyric, “I knew that my heart would never be the same.” At one point Romeo sort of proposes by telling Juliet he wants to “turn our prose into poetry.” This screenplay has done the reverse.

Parents should know that this movie, like the play that inspired it, has fight scenes including sword fights, with characters injured and killed, and an apparent suicide. There are sexual references.

Family discussion: If you were going to update this story, what would you do? Why has this story continued to enthrall audiences for more than 500 years?

If you like this, try: “Rosaline,” a sharp, witty re-telling of the Romeo and Juliet story from the perspective of the young woman Romeo was in love with before he met Juliet, the Oscar-winning “Shakespeare in Love,” and the Baz Luhrmann and Franco Zeffirelli versions of Shakespeare’s play and