Critics gave the movie good reviews. On the review given by Rotten Tomatoes, 74% of critics gave the movie positive reviews, based on 38 reviews. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" disliked the movie, giving it 2 stars and said "This production was a very bad idea. I have never seen anything remotely approaching the mess that the new punk version of Romeo & Juliet makes of Shakespeare's tragedy." Ebert wrote that Pete Postlethwaite and Miriam Margolyes were "the only actors in the movie who seem completely at home" and said "In one grand but doomed gesture, writer-director Baz Luhrmann has made a movie that (a) will dismay any lover of Shakespeare, and (b) bore anyone lured into the theater by promise of gang wars, MTV-style."