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RENT

Review By: Brian Otano
BrianOtano@TheCinemaSource.com

Rent is the story of a group of bohemians living in the East Village in the early 90’s, trying to succeed and find acceptance in the face of addiction, poverty, sickness and death.

As musicals go, Rent doesn’t have the strongest narrative thread; its strength lies mainly in the musical numbers and emotional lives of the characters. There are quite a few characters to keep up with—We have Mark, the lonely filmmaker (Anthony Rapp), Roger, his ex-junkie and AIDS ridden roommate (Adam Pascal), Mimi, their neighbor and Roger’s love interest (Rosario Dawson), Maureen, a performance-artist and Mark's ex-lover turned lesbian (Tony Award Winner Idina Menzel), Joanne, Maureen’s rebound girlfriend (Tracie Thoms), Tom Collins, a young professor (Jesse L. Martin), Angel, his drag queen lover (Tony Award winning Wilson Jermaine Heredia) and finally, Benny, (Taye Diggs) the group’s former friend and real estate developer who throws their live into tumult when he attempts to turn their neighborhood into a soulless haven of “virtual life”.

The cast-- headed by Rent newcomer Rosario Dawson, is damn near flawless. Their performances are charming, sharp and always sincere. Naysayers who think the Original Broadway Cast are too old to pull of their characters will be swiftly silenced when they check this out. Not only are they right at home in the parts they helped create, I’d be hard pressed to think of any other casting choices that would do the movie justice. The cast changes or additions, including Tracie Thoms as Joanne, Sarah Silverman as Alexi Darling, and Mackenzie Firgens as Roger's doomed ex girlfriend April, all bring great, fresh energy to the show.

The big-screen adaptation of Rent, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway musical has been a long time coming. With directors like Spike Lee, Sam Mendes and Baz Luhrman each having been attached to the adaptation at one point or another, some were left scratching their heads when Harry Potter director Chris Columbus was chosen to spearhead the project. Surprisingly, he remains faithful enough to the core of the story and pulls few punches in places that weren't exactly family friendly.

Major changes to the original stage script include the excision of songs like Contact, We're Okay, the Tune Ups, and Christmas Bells. Other songs, "You Okay, Honey?", "Happy New Year", the "Voice Mails" and random chunks of music here and there are converted into dialogue and changed just enough so that the actors didn't sound ridiculous speaking in rhyming verse. Changing Rent from a rock-opera (a long piece of music sung all the way through) to a musical with dialogue changes the overall energy of the piece, making it less manic and a bit quirkless.

In the translation from stage to screen, some major plot points become muddled, making the arc of the film a little scattered at ...