Review: 'Rosaline' Puts a Modern Twist on Shakespeare

The burning question in "Rosaline," which reimagines "Romeo + Juliet" from the point of view of the girl Romeo dumps, is how this frothy romp is going to give a tragedy a comedic ending. Fear not, though. Novelist Rebecca Serle pulled it off in "When You Were Mine," the book the movie is based on, and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber translate the book into a lighthearted film, along with director Karen Maine, who brings a deft touch to the project.

You know the story: Boy meets girl, but boy and girl belong to feuding families in medieval Italy. Bloodshed, elopements, secret potions, and suicide follow. Except, in this telling, it's Rosaline (Kaitlyn Dever), the girl that horndog Romeo (Kyle Allen) was madly in love with before he met Juliet (Isabela Merced) – and whom he instantly and unceremoniously dumped – who's the protagonist. With the Shakespearean universe thus rearranged, other familiar elements find unfamiliar places. Paris (Spencer Stevenson) is Rosaline's gay best friend, Rosaline's streetwise nurse (Minnie Driver) really is a nurse – as in an RN – and hunky Dario (Sean Teale), the only character aside from Nurse who has a proper Shakespearean accent, is just waiting for Rosaline to reconcile her dreams of living an independent life as a professional cartographer with the slow-burn rom-com passion that inevitably develops between them.

There are few surprises in this movie aside from a scattering of cuss words (including an F-bomb or two) that feel a little out of place in a Disney flick. Rosaline is very much a contemporary young woman, and when her cousin Juliet – peeved by Rosaline's jealous attempts to sabotage her love affair with Romeo – starts to speak her own mind, her scandalized father demands that Rosaline "un-fill" his daughter's head with her too-modern ideas about gender roles. That's a juicy mine for comedy, though the film scarcely taps it, settling for handier, and hoarier, tropes.

Still, the cast brings a sprightly energy to the film; Paris is almost written too broadly (and too stereotypically), but Stevenson finds a winning balance to let the gay character shine. Dever understands her character is the smartest person in the room, and plays her that way; everyone else gets out of the way and lets her do her thing. Maine knows how to keep things moving, and how to set a few more serious undercurrents in motion underneath the tomfoolery. Riotously, and sometimes rudely, anachronistic, this is some pretty smart fun for what could otherwise have been a dumb time waster.

"Rosaline" streams on Disney+ starting Oct. 14.