West Side Story is a love story set amid two warring teenage gangs – the Jets and the Sharks – on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1950s.
“This is the first, full Steven Spielberg musical, and it seems he has been depriving himself and us all,” wrote Empire’s Helen O-Hara.
“The new West Side Story won’t take the place of the glorious 1961 screen version… but with its more inclusive, ethnically appropriate and youthful casting, this is an emotionally charged and deeply affecting retelling of a timeless tale for a new generation,” said The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney.
“West Side Story is a bursting, live-wire pageant of a movie,” wrote Variety’s Owen Gleiberan.
“The downside? It’s perhaps too reverential, too perfect.