Rent - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

'Rent': Rock musical brings new magic to urban street scene

By MELINDA ENNIS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If you loved "Rent" on Broadway, you'll be happy with Hollywood's interpretation. And, if you weren't a fan of the theater version, you'll like the movie musical much, much more.

For some of us, the Broadway staging was too flat, the actors standing woodenly in place amid a single brick-walled set while the music rocked the rafters. Director Chris Columbus ("Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone") has blown the film version wide open with production numbers that tumble out of tenements, sway on the subway and burst out onto New York's seedier streets. Conversely, the play's delicate themes and character conflicts benefit from the intimacy of film.

Sony Pictures

'Rent'

B+

The verdict: Don't wait to rent this well-adapted version of the Broadway hit (which is best seen on the big screen).

Director: Chris Columbus
Starring: Idina Menzel, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Jesse L. Martin, Taye Diggs
Run time: 135 minutes
Release date: Nov. 23, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic material involving drugs and sexuality, and for some strong language.
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On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

Devotees will be pleased that the film retains most of the original cast, performing with passion. Although 10 years older than when they first portrayed 20-somethings, most still look age-appropriate. And those who don't (Idina Menzel as Maureen and Jesse L. Martin as Tom Collins) compensate with singing and dancing that a decade hasn't slowed. The addition of Rosario Dawson ("Sin City") as Mimi, a drug-addicted dancer, is a vitality booster, too.

When "Rent" opened on Broadway in 1996, it became a touchstone for young people who grew up in the age of AIDS — in the same way their parents embraced "Hair" in the age of Aquarius. Loosely based on the opera "La Boheme," this rock operetta tells the story of a group of fringe artists in New York's grungy East Village, circa 1990.

A former member of the group, Benny Coffin III (Taye Diggs), has moved up from Bohemia. Married into money, he's become the landlord of former roommates Mark (Anthony Rapp), a fledgling filmmaker, and Roger (Adam Pascal), an HIV-positive guitarist. Mark still nurses wounds inflicted by Maureen, a performance-artist who left him for lesbian lawyer JoAnne (Tracie Thoms).

Former philosophy professor Tom Collins and his new lover, a drag queen named Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), complete the surrogate-family circle. Both are also HIV positive.

With an eye on booming real estate, Benny wants to charge his buddies for the gigantic but squalid loft they occupy for free. To his friends, the rent represents his capitulation to the allures of capitalism and their own struggle to maintain artistic freedom (and the poverty that can come with it).

Meanwhile, Roger falls for neighbor Mimi, an erotic dancer at the Cat Scratch club, but their nascent romance is stymied by his illness and her drug abuse.

The plot, in which half the leading characters are HIV-positive and the heroine is a drug addict, is undeniably edgy. Nevertheless, in its own way, "Rent" is as corny as Kansas in August (to quote a lyric from the equally corny "South Pacific").

As with all musicals, there must be a suspension of disbelief in "Rent" when two people begin singing to each other on the street — even when the lovers warbling longingly are frequently of the same sex.

The musical has been deservingly criticized for some of its cliché-ridden contrivances (starving artists vs. capitalist pigs). And the score sometimes succumbs to operatically correct but silly sung-through dialogue ("Your candle wax is dripping on me" and "I think I dropped my stash").

Yet the late-20th century story of the AIDS epidemic is as timeless and poignant as is "La Boheme's" tale of tuberculosis in 19th century Paris.

Most importantly, the electrifying music still rules. The showstopping celebration of nonconformity, "La Vie Bohem," is here set in a bar. The jam-packed but nimbly clever lyrics honor everyone from beat poet Allen Ginsberg to Lenny Bruce, while the cast dances with joie de vivre across the tables.

"Rent" is certainly not your daddy's kind of musical. But its message of hope and redemption � in the face of disease and drug abuse – sings through. The movie makes the story accessible to everyone, without diminishing the musical's revolutionary, youthful heart.