Romeo + Juliet (1996)

Most people think so. 78% of audiences gave it a thumbs up based on 5,279 votes. Critics gave it 67%.

In director Baz Luhrmann's contemporary take on William Shakespeare's classic tragedy, the Montagues and Capulets have moved their ongoing feud to the sweltering suburb of Verona Beach, where Romeo and Juliet fall in love and secretly wed. Though the film is visually modern, the bard's dialogue remains. Wikipedia ↗

Romeo + Juliet is a 1996 American romantic tragedy directed by Baz Luhrmann, a modernized adaptation of Shakespeare's play set in the fictional Verona Beach — a sun-drenched, violent, media-saturated American city where the Montagues and Capulets are rival corporate empires and swords have been replaced by guns branded with names like "Sword" and "Dagger." Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes star as the star-crossed lovers, delivering Shakespeare's original dialogue amid gas stations, swimming pools, neon-lit carnivals, and an aquarium. Baz Luhrmann's maximalist style — rapid editing, saturated colors, operatic emotion, and a contemporary soundtrack featuring Radiohead, Garbage, and Des'ree — made Shakespeare viscerally accessible to a generation of teenage audiences who would never have engaged with a traditional period adaptation. Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo, equally capable of delivering iambic pentameter and conveying raw adolescent desperation, was a career-defining early performance.

Romeo + Juliet earned $147 million worldwide on a $14 million budget.