MOVIE REVIEW - Rent (2005)

The opening sequence is amazing. I love the "Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes" Seasons Of Love song. There is some mega-vocal talent here - especially the women, but also a surprising Taye Diggs. Jessie L. Martin, uh, not so much - please find a key. Rosario sings surprisingly well and is hot. But she's supposed to be 19? She's 26 and looks 32. Idina Menzel and Traci Thoms were my favorite singers, playing Joanna and Maureen. I also like Jessie's Santa Fe song and choreography on the subway.

Other than that, I hated it. The lyrics were ridiculously contrived. The Rent song, the Candle Burned Out song, the I Should Tell You song (ugh - just tell me), and especially during Mimi and Roger's first kiss… "Here goes… here goes… here goes…" GO ALREADY! Maureen's protest dramatization was embarrassingly awful. "Moo with me" is right. The scenery felt like a stage, not a movie set; and yet it drew me in less than a typical high school production. The snow was even fake - it clearly was plastic laying on their shoulders in the bar.

Emotionally, the movie consistently missed the mark. I am supposed to be happy about an impromptu commitment ceremony on the street between Maureen and Joanna? When their entire relationship has been wholly unstable? And in the very next scene, they Do break up. So no, I don't feel guilty for rolling my eyes at that quicky engagement. The disappearing AIDS group buddies was emotionally manipulative, but without the desired effect.
Intellectually, it was severely lacking. "The opposite of war is not peace; it is creation". Huh? This is supposed to be deep? Get a job, people, pay your rent.

I was most infuriated by the Bohemia song in the bar. "Here's to marijuana, here's to Pee Wee Herman, here's to dildos, here's to anything Taboo" - all the while, with the suits looking on from the next table in judgment. Maddening. That's the point, you say? Fine, I'm a suit. Here are people - drug users, promiscuous, artists who refuse to pay rent for years – who somehow pervert their world view so that they see themselves as morally superior. Sickening.
The best result of the movie, even better than the opening sequence, is that it gives me greater appreciation for the Broadway scene (Lease) in Team America: World Police.