Posted by Mr. Beaks
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1996 was the year I moved to
When it was just the off-Broadway sensation that put the fledgling New York Theatre Workshop on the legit map, Rent, the scrappy transposition of Puccini’s La Boheme from opera to hipster musical, represented an exciting new movement in a community that was struggling to stay relevant while most of its denizens mourned the loss of loved ones to AIDS.; That this revolutionary new voice had cruelly been struck from this world on the eve of the show’s first preview seemed fitting even though Jonathan Larson was felled not by that disease, but by an aortic aneurism.; Several months after his untimely passing, Larson was a god; tickets to Rent were harder to come by than a straight man at a Mame revival.; Madonna showed up one night, Spike Lee another, and suddenly the show was being rushed to Broadway for Tony Award consideration, though finding space on the clogged
In the throes of this theatrical love affair, it was blasphemy to suggest that Rent was a massively flawed work that fell apart in the second act.; Though its shortcomings mirror those of its source material (I’ve yet to see a production of La Boheme that doesn’t gradually deflate after Mimi’s waltz), the fact that, as a musical, Rent was more reliant on story to carry its audience through to the end made its narrative deficiencies particularly glaring, and those unceasing repetitions of “Seasons of Love” only exacerbated matters.; After a year or so, the glow emanating off of the show faded, and, as it repeatedly failed to live up to its hype, the not unjustified backlash set in.;
This is why, nearly ten years later, a filmed adaptation of Rent seems like a bad idea.; AIDS is no longer a death sentence,
Somehow, though,
This vigor carries over into “Today 4 U”, where Wilson Jermaine Heredia temporarily takes over the film as the cross dressing street percussionist Angel, who, as was the case on stage, quickly becomes the soul of the musical.; For those new to the musical, don’t blame
The film’s
What comes next is Act Two, and, for the most part, tedium.; “Take Me or Leave Me” is still a knockout number, even though the still sexy Idina Menzel is getting a bit long in the tooth to be playing a twentysomething free spirit, but it’s hardly brilliant enough to offset the awfulness of the power ballad “What Your Own”, which Columbus has inadvisably envisioned as an homage to the video for Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway”.; (Pascal’s also looking a bit too old for the struggling musician act.)
For all it has going against it, though, Colubmus’s version of Rent benefits from the glossy touch.; There was never anything remotely gritty about Larson’s show; it was just dressed-down camp.; Stripped of its pretensions, and transplanted to a more upscale neighborhood, Rent finally feels at home.