WCXX

"And what is my reward?! A puking fool!", Damian Lewis's needlessly hammy Lord Capulet spits at his daughter, a characteristic twist on Shakespeare's "And then to have a wretched puling fool". Let's think about this variant.

The archaic verb to pule means to whimper or whine. To puke is to throw up.

Juliet (Hailee Steinfeld) is lovestruck and doesn't want to marry Paris in Act V, sure, but she hasn't quite reached the vomiting stage yet.

The Fellowes defence is that he's writing for a new generation, who need the play livened up a bit. In the shonky hands of Italian director Carlo Carlei, his dutiful pastiche has quite the opposite effect. The supporting cast bustle about in entirely discordant movies. Some, like Lewis, with his bizarre monastic haircut, and Stellan Skarsgård's dour Prince, function like rent-paying guest stars on Game of Thrones. Others – the younger ones – treat the Montague/Capulet feud as if it's the sequel to a yet more ancient grudge: the one between werewolves and vampires in the Twilight series.

Steinfeld's rushed approach to all her monologues makes them maddeningly hard to follow. And even the poetry we're given is trampled on by Abel Korzeniowski's incessant score – a close cousin to Nino Rota's from the 1968 Zeffirelli film, if you imagine that one melodically misremembered and plonked over important scenes seemingly at random.

Romeo and Juliet do a lot more smooching than talking, which is possibly for the best. The film's one hope is that their chemistry might pull us through, but even here there's a calamity. Douglas Booth's Romeo is such an impossibly good-looking, ultra-competent dreamboat, he unbalances the film – next to him, Steinfeld looks more like a needy little sister than a soulmate. If their passion doesn't convince, all the business with secret vows, coma-inducing potions, and tardy letters just becomes so much clattering artifice.

In any form, it's a play that needs the successful illusion of overwhelming love to animate it properly. But let's blame Fellowes before Shakespeare – one of them built this house, the other has just walked right through it in his filthiest garden clogs.