Rent: Movie & DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

Toward the nerve-jangling midpoint of the new movie “Rent,” when the story and its Bohemian-wannabe characters have whipped themselves into a high froth of full-blown camp, I waited for a break in the deluge of song and dance numbers to ask my movie companion a question: “Where in the hell are we?”

“In a movie script” came the reply.

An excellent point. In Chris Columbus’ self-aware adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s robust 1996 stage musical, “Rent,” there never is a question that we're dealing with a film that apparently broke a hip upon its leap from stage to screen. Occasionally, the movie is entertaining and engrossing, but too often for the wrong reasons. It's a mess, collapsing in ways from which it doesn't recover, though God knows it tries.

The problem is that "Rent" never was intended for the screen. It’s designed for the stage, a completely different beast with different needs, starting with the electrical give and take between a cast and its audience. Broadway and Hollywood know the difficulties of pulling off this sort of film, but hope, I'm afraid, is more powerful than logic, and in this case, hope got the best of "Rent." Hope sent it to hell.

A contemporary retelling of Puccini's "La Boheme," the film does bring back much of the original cast, who do their best here, and it's hardly lacking in big issues as it deals with homelessness, death, drug addiction, sexuality, HIV and AIDS. And yet in spite of this, it packs the dramatic punch of a feather. The movie has a rushed, awkward feel to it. It strains to be as engaging as Larson's songs.

Unlike Rob Marshall's excellent adaptation of “Chicago," in which the song and dance numbers ingeniously stemmed from Roxie Hart’s imagination, or the upcoming "The Producers," which exists to spread its wings in the ether, "Rent" demands to be taken literally, which is its problem.

In one scene, a character might be having a perfectly engaging conversation about the dangers of shooting up dope or the worry of not being able to pay the rent, and then suddenly be singing his heart out, setting trash cans ablaze and dancing on tables as if that'll keep on the lights. It doesn't.

What Larson's "Rent" had going for it was rage; it was conceived out of fear and desperation. What Columbus' "Rent" has against it is apathy; it was conceived to make a buck. With the exception of World AIDS Day, in which the mass media finally puts HIV and AIDS above the fold, neither is given the focus they demand. Somehow, in spite of a pandemic that continues its dark march, we've grown so inexcusably comfortable with it, news about its progress has been relegated to the fringe.

That's the real crime this movie does make us face. It's also the reason it can't totally be dismissed.

Grade: C-