Tromeo And Juliet

I would easily watch this over the Baz Luhrman movie any day of the week.

Now is it shall we say faithful to Shakespeare? Nnnnno. But a funny adaptation it is, taking the romance of star crossed lovers and their feuding families and delivers it the only way Troma could. It's undoubtedly a passion project from Lloyd and took a long ass time to get backing enough to even start production, but he wanted to go for it and I must give credit where it is due. This was not a Kabukiman style production of over a million bucks, about $350,000 but the quality on the screen speaks volumes to the dedicated crew who worked on it. It takes a fine balance to quote Shakespeare among other classic authors and combine that with gore and lewdness, but it works well in my eyes. It certainly helps this is one of the strongest casts I've seen in a Troma picture, Jane Jensen and Will Keenan effortlessly captures that wide eyed romance just with a lot more banging involved, William Beckwith is a classically trained actor and ooh it has been a minute since I've seen a villain this damn hateable and just gross he may truthfully be the standout performance, Valentine Miele which is a name in and of itself something ol' William would come up with is such a little shit that he may be my favorite of the troupe, and if you need any confirmation as to why I enjoy this so much the whole story and narration is done by fuckin' Lemmy from Motorhead. That absolutely should have been part of every production of this play. Admittedly it's not as out there as some of the other movies I've reviewed this week, at least until nearer the end, and it takes such a street level view with this world known story that warrants at least one viewing. The production design, the extras, the soundtrack, the effects, all the pieces that make it come together give a lot of flavor and variety because let's be honest here Romeo & Juliet has been told too many times that it gets fucking boring! Goddamn if they showed this in my 9th grade english class I guarantee everyone would not only be glued to the screen but could write a hell of a report after the fact! It's a parody absolutely but that doesn't diminish the effect or relevance of it's being. If you wanted body piercings, lesbionics, loss of limb, and plenty of cussing in your theatre play look no further. It's entertaining as hell and we all know hell is pretty entertaining. 3 stars, 7.5/10! 21st century Troma here we come!