Rent (2005)

AIDS! Woo! Lets all sing about it! Look, I won't deny that the music is about as catchy as you can possibly cram into a musical, or that the cast isn't... uh... well cast. I just think it was a mistake to have Chris Columbus direct. His tendency to take deep, dark, complex themes and turn them into sterile, safe films goes against the very grain that this story deserves. This is a tale of slow painful deaths, poverty, and homelessness. Instead we get pretty-boy actors singing about how much it sucks to be gay/sick/a documentary filmmaker in a supposedly poverty-stricken part of New York City that, while home to an unusually high population of homeless folks, still somehow seems like a nice place to live. The whole film just feels disingenuous. Part of the reason that musical theatre is fun to watch is seeing real live people sing their hearts out and dance their feet off in front of you. The magic of film editing means that anyone can pull off even the most impossible dance steps, and computer tech can easily alter a failing voice to make sure it's exactly on pitch. I don't question that there's a great show in Rent, but I question the wisdom of putting to film something that worked so damn well on stage and shoehorning it onto the silver screen, especially under the direction of someone incapable of making a movie with any real dirt in it. The soundtrack remains nearly brilliant and the story still works, but whatever it is that makes this show a phenomenon never made it past the proscenium. Good to see Alan Tudyk's stunt double is getting work.

5 out of 10.