Film Reviews

Rent

• Rating:
• Director: Chris Columbus
• Starring: Adam Pascal
• Details: US, 135mins, 15s.

Based on Puccini's opera La Boheme, Rent is the film adaptation of Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning musical that wowed Broadway audiences. Rent follows the trials and tribulations of two roommates, Mark and Roger, who share an apartment in East Village, New York. Mark (Rapp) attempts to escape the low-life by trying to make a film while still having feelings for his former girlfriend (now a lesbian) Maureen (Indina Menzel). His HIV positive, junkie roommate Roger (Pascal) is numb to life as a result of a tragedy that happened years before and now seems to resigned to squalor with his drug-addicted S+M dancer girlfriend Mimi (Dawson).
It's not the feel-good movie of the year, then? Rent is a bleak, uncompromising look at New York life in the late '80s but director Chris Columbus seems undecided with which direction he wants to take Rent. He opens with the cast singing a moving rendition of 'Seasons Of Love' to an empty audience that suggests a different take on the play, but then he switches to the horrible 'Rent' opening song that is totally contrasting in tone - emotionally and cinematically. Columbus also never rescues the screenplay from the stage, as Rent looks cobbled together as a series of segments interrupted by songs, rather than one fluent narrative. He isn't helped by the singing performances of one of his main leads - Anthony Rapp - who suffers the same fate as Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge (shouting rather than singing). It comes down to two obvious statements - if you like musicals, you'll like this; if the thought of spending two hours plus watching some down-and-outers trying to make their way in the world through song makes you want to get violently sick, you won't.

Review by Gavin Burke