Buy posters from this movie

A loose updating of Puccini’s “La Boheme,” “Rent” tells the story of a tightly-knit group of young bohemian types living in the East Village of New York circa 1989. Most of them are struggling to become artists–Mark (Anthony Rapp) wants to be a filmmaker and travels the streets with a dinky little Bolex, Roger (Adam Pascal) is an embittered musician who dreams of writing one perfect song and Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) is a street musician struggling, like many of his friends, with AIDS. Others in their group include HIV-positive computer genius Tom Collins (Jesse L. Martin), a former roommate of Mark and Roger’s who strikes up a friendship with Angel, Mimi (Rosario Dawson), the sexy downstairs junkie who works as an exotic dancer and who has a thing for Roger and Maureen (Idina Menzel), an outspoken performance artist who used to date Mark until she dumped him for Joanne (Tracie Thoms), a slumming public advocate.<

There is no real central plot driving the film, merely a bunch of loose threads that occasionally surface and are then quickly abandoned. Much of the opening is centered on a battle between the bohos, who would rather spend their money on heroin than on rent, and the evil landlords who want to tear down their buildings in the name of redevelopment; the irony is that the landlord liaison is none other than Benjamin Coffin III (Taye Diggs), who used to be known as “Benny” in the days when he lived with Mark and Roger before selling out to the man by getting a job and a wife. At the same time, Mark struggles with the notion of selling out himself when his footage of police brutality at an anti-development rally gets the attention of a tabloid news show, Tom and Angel struggle with their disease and Maureen and Joanne struggle with their relationship–the former is a shameless flirt with everyone she encounters (“There will always be women in rubber flirting with me!”) while the latter is a massive control freak. Meanwhile, back in the urban jungle, Mimi continues to flirt with Roger but he is so haunted by his memories of a past love gone bad and his inability to create his perfect song that he cruelly casts her aside and doesn’t realize that he truly loves her until it is almost too late.<

In other words, strip away the faux-boho (faux-bo?) trappings and “Rent” reveals itself as the kind of material that could appear on the stage of a dinner theater in Topeka without raising an eyebrow from a single audience member. Granted, that isn’t a flaw in and of itself–one generally does not go to a musical for a penetrating look at the human condition–but the problem here is that the show is clearly working under the delusion that it is far more profound and important than it really is. There is not a single moment of subtlety to be had in its 135 minutes–its idea of gradually revealing a character’s history is to have them invite someone to a support group by saying “It’s a meeting for people with AIDS . . . people like me!” Eventually, things get so unfocused that events that are clearly intended to be central to the proceedings–the fate of Angel and the relationship between Roger and Mimi–wind having virtually no impact at all. As for the various strands about characters selling out their edginess, their protestations are difficult to swallow in the context of a story that is unwilling to make statements any more profound than “AIDS is bad” or “Paying rent is bad”–statements which may be true but would seem to be sentiments hardly requiring 135 minutes of singing and dancing to convey. Then again, what else would you expect from a film that supposedly embraces sexy rebellion and the sleazy romance of pre-gentrification New York, yet only works itself up to PG-13 levels of anarchy and was shot almost entirely in San Francisco?<

Speaking of the singing and dancing, the musical numbers are almost entirely uninspired–somewhat of a major flaw in a film that is almost entirely all singing and dancing. The lyrics are basically drivel–a collection of too-clever-by-half lyrics that spend so much time trying to tell the story that they never quite get around to working as songs–and the music is little more than standard-issue mush that thinks that because it mixes an electric guitar a little louder than normal at times, it is somehow rockin’ the joint. And while I give director Chris Columbus (yes, the genius behind “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Bicentennial Man”) credit for at least taking the risk of just having his characters sing and dance instead of coming up with some tortured conceit to “explain” it (a la “Chicago”), he has staged them in such a listless manner that you begin to wonder why he even bothered. With one exception, which we’ll get to in a moment, there isn’t a single number here that ever catches fire on its own. One number–“La Vie Boheme,”a mock elegy for the death of the bohemian lifestyle–seems to have taken everything it could from the film version of “Hair” except for the energy and vitality. Another, Maureen’s performance-art piece designed to rally the neighborhood against the developers, is so badly misconceived and executed that for a while, I began to think that it was meant to be a joke–along the lines of the “Bad Playhouse” bit that Dan Aykroyd used to do on “Saturday Night Live”–until I realized that I was supposed to take both the bit and the audience’s ecstatic reaction seriously instead of as a goof on pretentious arty types celebrating gibberish so as not to seem unhip.<

With a couple of exceptions, most of the actors in “Rent” are the same people who played the roles when the show was first produced. Since few of them are stars by any means–Martin is probably the best-known from his work on “Law and Order”–this was another admittedly brave move on Columbus’s part that nevertheless has backfired horribly. The first problem is an obvious one; these characters are all supposed to be in their early-20's and yet they are being portrayed by people who are clearly in their mid-to-late-30's. A bigger problem is that they seem far too comfortable in their roles to ever feel like real people–they all come across like performers doing their singing and dancing on auto-pilot while thinking about their dinner reservations later that evening. Additionally, they make the classic stage performer mistake of acting as though they are still on the stage; even in the quieter moments, they still seem to be pitching their performances broadly enough to reach the kids in the cheap seats.<

In fact, the only person in the cast who comes off well here is Rosario Dawson, who, along with Thorn, never appeared in the stage version. Not only does she look young enough to be plausible as Mimi (although perhaps not young enough to pass for sixteen, despite what one of the song lyrics might say otherwise), she also brings the desperate energy and edginess that her fellow actors otherwise lack. In fact, the only musical number in the film that actually works his her sizzling solo turn on “Out Tonight,” the one number that really feels as if it comes directly from the heart of the character singing it. She is so impressive here, in fact, that during the times when she is off the screen, I found myself imagining any number of other musicals that I would rather see her appearing in than this one–cast her as Roxie in “Chicago” and the movie might have actually deserved some of its success.

Despite her efforts (not to mention a couple of costumes that will inspire lustful thoughts in most audience members, regardless of gender), even Dawson’s considerable presence can’t begin to save “Rent” from being anything more than the kind of lumbering and outdated monstrosity that helped kill off the musical as a viable film genre in the first place. Of course, there are thousands of Rentheads out there who will blindly embrace the film solely because of their fond memories of the original show. For others–the kind of people who doggedly insist that a film live or die on its own merits–sitting through “Rent” will prove to be a nearly unendurable chore

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13515&reviewer=389
originally posted: 11/23/05 16:27:31
 printer-friendly format