Okay it’s about time I whittled down my slew of brainspew-on-the-page reviews and write something proper on this one, so as of now, those old reviews I wrote with my internal censor entirely bound and gagged are confined to a text file on my desktop – so don’t worry, they haven’t gone for good … but I don’t intend for anyone new to read them.

So let’s start at the beginning. I always tend to say I found “Rent” late, but now I look back and realise I first listened to it only 3 years after Jonathan Larson’s death, I realise, I didn’t do so bad afterall. I became a Renthead for a good year or so courtesy of my first and only true batch (give or take a person or two) of online friends. That line the whole show revolves around, “No Day But Today”, got me at the right time, and I guess that’s where the undeniable brilliance of this movie for me personally starts. It still has that persistent line, and that’s one star out of five you can’t take away from it. Add the use of the original cast where possible and you’ve got your second.

The movie took years to finally happen – I believe they were working on it practically from the day it became a Broadway hit. Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese were attached, they went from an entire, practically devoid of music rewrite to a verbatim reproduction and everything inbetween … it’s amazing even a second of goodness remains let alone the scene upon scene that does, so there’s your third immovable star right there. It finally landed in the hands of Chris Columbus, who did a good job of the first two by-the-numbers Harry Potter movies. Sure those first two movies lacked the cinematic adventure of the subsequent productions (actually, I’d argue that only Azkaban fit that description, the last was quite messy by comparison), but they were undeniably faithful to source.

Anyway, it’s the same situation here: though often the movie lacks the punch of its source, the times when it is heartbreakingly faithful are more impeccably done than anyone could’ve expected. Though whole chunks of music have been stripped away, more often than not it is entirely made up for by what follows or preceeds the breach. For example, I don’t like the fact that “Goodbye Love” has been taken away (even though it’s one of the few removals they did film, and is available on the DVD and soundtrack) ... but the use of that song’s music as underscore during the “Search for Mimi” montage is almost equally indispensable. In the same way, I don’t like the restaging of certain scenes – Tango Maureen turning into Tango Roxanne from Moulin Rouge, and the entirely incomprehensible staging of “Take Me Or Leave Me” being the main offenders – but it’s always made up for. Mimi leaves Roger as she sings the last part of “Another Day”, but I loved her desperation as she sung that into his face when I saw it onstage … here, though, the image of Angel, Collins, and Mark coming round the corner behind her is just as indelible.

In the end, as my old reviews fleshed out, there are a lot of things wrong with this movie, and I can entirely understand why newcomers in particular could be turned off quickly, and this annoys me no end; the movie pretty much failed to make the show any new fans, so why did they attempt to change it at all for the big screen? The point is, yes, it’s flawed; but it’s so consistent in its style, that beautiful rusty colour scheme making every single frame undeniably RENT, they brought back a good 2/3rds of the original cast, people who knew Larson, who really knew the show better than any of us will, and those standalone scenes like “I’ll Cover You” on the street and “Sante Fe” on the subway – in the end, no matter how much this movie infuriates me, even if it catches me in the worst of moods … I can never say that it’s less than a masterpiece, and I hope that everyone who ever needs exactly what it offers will find it like I did all those years ago.

Okay, I’ll admit, that still got away from me a little, but it’s better than what preceeded it lol. What can I say, this movie sends me into a tizzy. Oh … and I still seriously think the one thing that could’ve made the movie better would’ve been a tiny glimpse of Larson in that end montage, à la Douglas Adams in the H2G2 movie.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 7:40 pm in 5 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as broadway, HIV, musical, NYC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.