Rent the movie has finally come out, a decade after Rent the musical opened on Broadway. Given Hollywood's penchant for tried and true story lines, I'm surprised it too them so long to make this movie.
Rent the Tony winning best musical, of course, is one of those unexpectedly bright flashes of light on the Great White Way that has spawned committed fans who see the show over and over and over in a way very few musicals have ever inspired. I think also that part of the fanatacism of "Rentheads" comes from the unexpected death of its young creator-composer Jonathan Larson shortly after the final dress rehearsal of the show. Of course, the regretable part of the ensuing reverence is that some of the "tweaking" of a new show that needs to be done between workshop performances and actually making it to Broadway was never done, since noone wanted to change the dead composer's work; consequently, the musical has its weaknesses, though it's a show I've always liked.
What's interesting about the story of Rent is that it is not something original, but it's an "updating" of the Puccini opera, La Boheme. The setting has shifted from bohemian Paris to the rundown lofts of 1990s downtown New York City, and the singers' names have been Americanized: Roger (Rodolfo), Mark (Marcello), Maureen (Musetta), Tom Collins (Colline), Angel Schanard (Schnaurd), and Benny (Benoît), with Mimi staying the same and with Marlene/Musetta getting a new lesbian love interest, JoAnne. Just like the opera characters, the musical characters are all starving artists struggling to survive, only the musical has some of the characters struggling with heroin addiction and half of the principal characters are HIV-positive, and noone has the operatic tuberculosis.
This film is definitely a movie of the musical, rather than a movie based on the musical. I suppose all the Rentheads wouldn't have tolerated a lot of changes to the musical's script, though I think the additions to dialogue for the movie were definitely improvements and moving recitative to spoken dialogue helps non-musical movie audiences relate better. The movie also got the opportuntity to add some new visual material, including a wonderful dream dance sequence supplementing "The Tango Maureen." On the downside, though, a few scenes used stage blocking, which lessened the reality of those moments, particularly during the big dance number "La Vie Boheme." The new on-location scenes were great visual additions, though, since the musical had limited itself to a simple, spare tenement set.
After last year's stage-to-screen debaucle with Andrew Lloyd-Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, where unfortunate casting decisions were made to use actors who very simply could not sing, I was worried about what would happen to the edgy music of Rent. Rent's producers were lucky, though, and succeeded in casting six of the eight original Broadway cast members, thus guaranteeing the musical success of the film. The replacement Mimi was fine and the replacement JoAnne was fabulous. The problem, though, is that a decade has elapsed since the musical opened on Broadway, and time has not been kind to the actors. These characters are supposed to be young twenty-somethings (Mimi is supposed to be a teenager), but the original cast members are all now well in to their mid-thirties. On top of that, Collins is played by Jesse L. Martin who has become famous for his role in the Law and Order television series, and it was hard for me to divorce him from his cop personna.
His fans will scream when I say this, but I've never been a fan of Adam ("Roger") Pascal's singing; he tries to "belt," or squat on his voice, when a purer, more lyrical tenor sound would better fit the role; nevertheless, it's the voice we're used to hearing on all the CDs. Pascal in particular had difficulty acting and lip syncing to the soundtrack; perhaps it something only another professional singer would notice, but in some of the songs he's singing very hard and emotionally, but I didn't see the corresponding expression and throat movement on his face during the scene.
I haven't heard yet how opening weekend box office numbers are. We went to a late afternoon matinee yesterday, which was the opening day of the movie's release, and our theater was only about half full. It's a good movie, though, and you should definitely put it on your list of films to see. You needn't be a fan of the musical to be able to full enjoy the movie; Ryan hadn't ever seen the musical, and he enjoyed the movie a lot. So, go see it!
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