Rosaline review: Shakespeare-inspired romcom doesn’t quite work

ROSALINE

While Kenneth Branagh’s directorial career has frequently demonstrated how to wring thrills from slavishly faithful Shakespeare adaptations, more often the best modern updates tend to play fast and loose with the Bard. During the brief turn-of-the-millennium craze for refashioning Shakespearean plays to feature misfit American teens, Gus van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho took cues from Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V; 10 Things I Hate About You turned The Taming of the Shrew into a teen classic; and She’s The Man translated Twelfth Night into a football comedy.

As Shakespeare-inspired material goes, Rosaline, a likable new comedy based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, is unlikely to be confused with Akira Kurosawa’s Ran.

This sprightly parallel romcom, which unfolds from the perspective of Juliet’s cousin Rosaline (Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever) is based on Rebecca Serle’s bestselling YA novel When You Were Mine. The script, by Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber, known for The Fault in Our Stars, is lively, even if the film’s post-girlboss politics (Rosaline really wants to be a cartographer) and post-Bridgerton pop score feel awfully ho-hum.

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A winning cast, mostly drawn from the ranks of Gen Z, ensures that Rosaline’s spurned, sulky plans to steal Romeo back from Juliet can be fun. Minnie Driver’s droll nurse is a delight.

Unhappily, the strife between the Montagues and Capulets has nothing on the tonal battle between the project’s offhand frivolity and one of literature’s great romances. The anachronistic, snarky dialogue misses as often as it hits. Romeo (Allen) emerges as a cad; Juliet is reduced to a twit.

It’s questionable, given the insistent Tudor-ruffed girl power, that Rosaline – despite her map-making aspirations – only recovers from her anguish when another suitor (Sean Teale’s Dario) comes along to fill the Romeo-shaped hole in her heart. The risible denouement does nothing to bridge these contradictions.