William Shakespeare’s Francesca Noel and Cameron Engels. It’s helmed by a Black filmmaker. And it finds a way to propel a 500-year-old play into the present day. But, fam, R#J is just not a good movie. In fact, it’s pretty horrendous—and right from the start. Williams immediately drops his audience inside an increasingly confusing vortex where his protagonists, two teenagers in an urban neighborhood, exist in today’s world but speak in iambic pentameter, the English poetry style made famous by Shakespeare. Cameron Engels and Francesca Noel in R#J To be doubly clear, they say things like “Where art thou” and “Ye,” and not in jest. This is just how they talk. Intellectual audiences might assume in the beginning that the two are simply boning up on their British literature or practicing for a recital. Nope, buckle up, this is the entire ride.