Imagine if, after Rosaline scorned Romeo, she suddenly decided that she was jealous of Romeo's new love affair with Juliet and went out of her way to pick on the poor girl instead of just talking about her feelings... You still wouldn't have the plot of this movie, but it's the closest you're going to get!

Instead, this is a collection of melancholy moments that use Romeo & Juliet as set dressing to convey a high school story about love and loneliness. Typically with media centered on high school kids putting on a Shakespeare play, I end up wishing that the entire story could have just been the play because the final act production tends to be far more interesting than the character interactions leading up to it - and, while the version presented in this movie is no great shakes, it brought forth a lot more entertainment than anything else the writing had to offer.

The pacing is deader than Romeo and Juliet, but at least I can appreciate that the characters are allowed to be awkward kids. There were more than a few moments that didn't feel properly explained either through subtext or exposition, but the second the movie suddenly broke into a stop-motion segment it officially lost me.

Admittedly, the story clearly tries to take Shakespeare's dialogue and juxtapose it with the feelings of present day teenagers in an effort to show that the more things change the more they stay the same. It's unfortunate that the movie doesn't seem to show any deep understanding of the play's themes, but evidently that wasn't the point. Just like Seon Hwa, the audience is expected to float along in a haze for the nearly two-hour runtime as the characters contemplate what it means to be in love.

Whether a tragedy or a comedy, I just wish I had been allowed to see an interesting love story unfold, but there was so little romantic chemistry anywhere to be found. The main friend group had the most believable chemistry and were more enjoyable to watch whenever they were casually hanging out.

Overall, the cinematography tries its best to be pretty and sometimes succeeds. It just couldn't make up for the rest of the elements not coming together despite everyone's best efforts.