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5.1/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.1/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Romeo and Juliet remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you are looking for a definitive version of the Shakespeare play, keep walking. This 1933 short by Paul Terry is for the weirdos who enjoy animation history or just want to see how a classic story gets chewed up and spit out in under ten minutes.
Is it worth your time? If you've got a spare few minutes and want to see some frankly bizarre character designs, sure. If you hate cartoons that try to be serious, you are going to want to skip this one entirely. 🎞️
The whole thing feels rushed, obviously. It hits the beats—the balcony, the poison, the tragic end—but it skips all the actual poetry that makes the story work. It is just a list of events happening because they have to.
I found myself distracted by the backgrounds. They have this flat, static quality that makes the characters look like they are walking on cardboard. It’s weirdly charming in a broken sort of way.
There is a moment near the end where the timing is just… off. It’s like the animators realized they were running out of film and just decided to wrap everything up in three quick frames. It reminded me a bit of the frantic pacing in Pinocchio, though with significantly less budget and way more confusion.
The music is pretty relentless. It just keeps chugging along, never really matching the mood of the scenes. You almost feel like the movie is trying to convince you that this moment matters, even though the animation is just barely keeping up.
It’s not a good movie. But it’s a fascinating little artifact. It’s the kind of thing you watch once while eating dinner and then never think about again, except for that one weird shot of the tomb.
Some of the movements are jittery, like the frames were swapped by accident. It happens. You can almost feel the team just wanting to get to the finish line. 🤷♂️