The 2019 film Ophelia, based on the YA novel by Lisa Klein, retells the story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective. In this version, she doesn’t go mad and drown; she secretly marries Hamlet and even bears Hamlet’s child some months after his tragic death. The new movie Rosaline, premiering Oct.14 on Hulu, takes a similar tack with its main character—a minor, offstage player in Romeo and Juliet whose story is presented as a rom-com. It, too, is based on a book: Rebecca Serle’s 2012 YA novel, When You Were Mine. At least, that what the end credits say; viewers may be hard-pressed to recognize much of the book onscreen.

In the original play, Rosaline is a young woman with whom Romeo Montague is infatuated and who apparently doesn’t share his feelings. Early on, lovesick Romeo attends a party to gaze upon the fair Rosaline—instead, he sees her cousin Juliet Capulet, and the rest is tragic-romance history. In most stagings, Rosaline never appears in the flesh; other characters merely refer to her. As far as the play is concerned, she’s a passing fancy; later, Romeo notes of Rosaline, “I have forgot that name, and that name’s woe.”

Serle remembered Rosaline, though, and made her the narrator of her novel, but it doesn’t appear as if she remembered much of the rest of the play. Her book updates the story’s setting to present-day Southern California, and although the basic setup is the same—feuding families, star-crossed lovers, and so on—the details are very different. In this version, Rosaline and Romeo—sorry, “Rose” and “Rob”—are wealthy private school students and old friends who just started pursuing a relationship; she’s really into him, and he likes her well enough—at least, until Juliet moves back to town. The drama is frothy as Rose pines over Rob, finds a new boy, and uncovers the source of the animosity between the Capulets and Montagues—er, “Caplets” and “Montegs.” Rob and Juliet, much like their Shakespearean counterparts, die at the end, but not as a result of tragic misunderstandings and suicide. Instead, they die in a car crash; Rose grieves, but wistfully learns things about life and about herself, as YA protagonists are wont to do.

Overall, When You Were Mine is a fairly ordinary, melodramatic YA tale with bits of Romeo and Juliet awkwardly bolted onto it. But it’s missing what makes the play great; where’s its version of Juliet’s brutish cousin Tybalt or the deeply poetic Mercutio? This differently named rose simply doesn’t smell as sweet.

Rosaline, on the other hand, feels like a clever homage to the Bard’s work. Its setting is the same as the play’s—in fair Verona, they set their scene—and all the familiar characters are present, although they all speak in colloquial, modern English, not iambic pentameter. (At one point, when the poetically minded Romeo quotes Shakespeare’s words of love, Rosaline asks him, “Why are you talking like that?”) As in When You Were Mine, Rosaline, the main character, is jilted for Juliet—but that’s about all book and movie share.

For one thing, the tone of the film, as directed by Obvious Child’s Karen Maine, isn’t tragic; at its best, it brings to mind a Doris Day/Rock Hudson romantic comedy. Rosaline, as played by Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever, is forthright and funny as she schemes to win Romeo back; late in the film, for instance, when Juliet shares her plan to fake her death, Rosaline responds, “That is quite possibly the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life.…There’s like 50 different ways that that could go wrong.” (The plan does go wrong, but not in the way that audiences may expect.) Romeo, portrayed by Kyle Allen, is an earnest dope, and Juliet (Dora and the Lost City of Gold’s Isabela Merced) is naïve but sweet and open to new ideas. The great Minnie Driver plays the Nurse with plenty of wit; when Rosaline asks her where the cheating Romeo might be, she responds, deadpan, “Well, there is a lot of plague going around.” A new character, Dario—charmingly played by Reign’s Sean Teale—banters well as Rosaline’s other potential love interest.

Despite a few significant changes, the main storyline is, for the most part, admirably faithful to the play’s—if not the novel’s. This causes tonal problems at times; for example, Tybalt’s canonical death comes as a rather rude shock in the midst of all the rom-com shenanigans. However, one feels like a curmudgeon to point out such things in such a bright and fun film, which manages to outshine When You Were Mine in every way.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.