As I mentioned elsewhere, I loved the retro feel and the full-on schmaltzy Broadway stylings. This adaptation is going to be spoken of in the same breath as the classic Jesus Christ Superstar - another lovably cheesy musical in pretty much the exact same tradition. There's no way you can take the cheese out of this kind of show in order to make it more serious - it was born as camp humor with a serious message of tolerance, and will live or die as camp humor. Some of the particular musical numbers in Rent could have been taken straight out of Rocky Horror Picture Show - they're that good!

I've seen it a second time now, and it was even better!

I guess I'm just a softie, but I loved it and thought it was well-done, considering it's a difficult musical to film. One unfortunate aspect is that Mimi, Joanne and Collins are the only characters who ever come across as real people. Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thoms somehow outshine the other actors (except perhaps Jesse Martin and Wilson Heredia) despite not even appearing in the original production. Adam Pascal is especially lackluster. Still, the film was tremendously moving. B+

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.


If I cared enough, I'd hate you

I saw this movie last night again.

I liked it more.

The more I think about the film, the more I liked Rosario Dawson in it. I never really thought of her as an especially noteworthy actress before but she's really pretty good. The fact that she gave arguably the most heartfelt and connected performance in this film despite being new to it says something to me.

Clearly deserves some of the mentions she gets from predictors and the Golden Satellites.

It's pretty awful.

My olive branch to KGai is that the only really great characters in this are Angel and his/her boyfriend. It comes close to the edge with these two when they are dancing on the subway train. The lead black guy is pretty good and aside from the lesbian-lawyer-chick he's the only really great singer.

As a musical the songs are disjointed and it has no melody or drive. The only song that is really memorable is the 529,600 minutes song and it's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay toooooooo "showy" and it's not really even that great.

Rosario Dawson weaves in between incoherance and carrying a tune. She just can't pull it off, and her boyfriend "Mr. Token-Straight-White-Guy" sings like The Phantom singing "Living on a Prayer" at a Bon Jovi concert c. 1986 but if the song he takes the WHOLE movie trying to write sounded anything close to "Living on a Prayer" then the movie might have been worthwhile... when his song finally comes out it makes you think it might be better to die of the homeless-heroin-overdose-plot-convienience. He like sounds like he's crying when he sings every song.

Columbus adds no grit to the piece, and aside from Angel's wardrobe, there's nothing that explicitly ties it to the time and place which I think is VERY important when talking about Rent and New York of the early 1990s.

Whatever... it will be largely forgotten. It deserves to be. Yeah the message is important, but I would recommend other AIDS related films before ever getting in Rent territory.

Just watch And The Band Played On instead

She was definately my favorite part of the film.

Wow... glad I decided to rent this first. (was about to blind buy it... )

I'll probably end up watching it again before returning it, but I'm really surprised by how much I... didn't really like it, it doesn't really work well.

I liked some of the songs, though. *shrug*

C+.

Awful, but in a hilarious kind of way.

D

As a baseline reference, what do you consider to be a great musical?

I haven't seen many to answer that question.

There's all the animated ones: Land Before Time, Beauty and the Beast, etc...

I don't see those as musicals as that basically would make most Disney films musicals, heh.

Indeed they are. Classic old school musicals, no less. At least up till they dismantled their 2D animation department.

Surely, no one would argue that a movie like Beauty and the Beast is not an out-and-out movie musical!

Best two musicals for me are Moulin Rouge and South Park: BLU.

I actually watched parts of it last night and once again what stuck out to me was the utter blandness of the production. The story is there, the music is decent, the actors are fairly good, but the production is just so second-rate, so boring, so utterly bland.

This really could have been a good or even great film in the hands of a better director I think.

I'd file Rent under "guilty pleasure". I enjoyed a few of the songs, and I find Rosario attractive. I also generally like musical type movies (Moulin Rouge, Chicago) and find them easy to watch - it feels like I'm watching an extended music video.

However, there were definitely some cringe worthy moments that brought the movie down a bit (some sappy Hallmark songs come to mind). In the end Rent was what it was...

I give it a B-

The biggest problem I had with Rent, and for pretty much all movie musicals based off of plays, is that the screenplays, and the film itself, must include every single aspect from the original play so as not to piss off the people who loved the play so much. That means bloated running times. When you pay $80-$300 on Broadway to see a musical, you are committed to the damn thing for three and a half hours. Actually, the only musicals I seem to really like are one's that weren't on Broadway (Newsies). With a movie that costs $9 bucks to see in theaters, or especially if you rent the film, there's a different kind of commitment there, especially if you did not see the original play. This was basically me. It's really hard for me to invest in watching a musical on screen. The story must be very good to keep me interested. Rent's drags on for too long.

For the first hour I was invested. I enjoyed the music and bought into the stories. During the second hour, when there is a song sequence during the lesbian commitment dinner, I became bored. That song easily could've been cut out of the film, and I imagine was only on Broadway as a filler. It doesn't further the story (Like most songs in musicals do that............), it's just there in the film because it was on Broadway (I'm assuming). When Angel died, I became restless. And when Mimi was brought back from the dead, I started laughing.

The music is very good, but the film is brought down by where the story ends up going, and because of how long it takes to get there. And as others have mentioned, for Rent to get out of it's theater confines, the cinematography and locations are dull to look at. That saying though, the film was nowhere near as dull as I expected, as I usually do not like musicals.

C

Some hit and miss moments. Belongs on the stage more than it does on the big screen. The direction was pretty weak.

But the songs are very good (and the actors do a surprisingly great job with them). And it has a key element that made The Phantom of the Opera so awful...the energy, passion, spirit. It's what ultimately makes the film as satisfying as it was for me.

Solid B.

I don't care what you say! What a great film musical this is!!!

Soon to be a camp classic.

I watched it again a few weeks ago, and it does improve dramatically on repeat viewings. Still not a "great" film, nor is it near the top of my favorite musicals -- Moulin Rouge! and Chicago, but its a good film in its own right. I still maintain that it should have had a better director which would have drastically improved the overall quality and lessened the blandness of some parts of the film.

B

This is an odd one for me.

The first time I watched it, I thought it was awful. Hilariously bad. From the opening "Rent!" song to the cringeworthy ending, and every annoying, pretentious, art school, bohemian second in between. I wanted to punch Anthony Rapp and that Bon Jovi bloke throughout the whole thing.

Then something compelled me to watch it again. And, to my shock, I liked it a little more. Now I've seen it a few times, and I've come to kinda think it's quite great. I still hate every single one of the characters, and some bits ("la vie boheme"?) are just plain shit. But there's something about it that just... clicks for me. I don't know what it is.

Maybe it's Rosario Dawson. She's fucking awesome. And the "Another Time, Another Place" song is easily the best in the film. A lot of the songs are definitely growers.

B