RENT RANT
I was prepared to be disappointed by RENT. It’s easy to be disappointed by remakes of films you know well, and it seems as though this could only be exacerbated by the transfer of a stage play to film, the fact that about 85 percent of the dialogue is sung, and that it was being directed by the most pathetic director to ever be given millions upon millions of dollars. But I figured, given the fact that almost the entire original cast was involved, it couldn’t be fucked up too badly.
How wrong I was. It wasn’t that it was that bad. It was just so incredibly lame. All the fun and spontaneity was taken out of it. Ironically, Columbus took a play about living and loving the life you have, and carefully removed all of its life like the skilled film-killing surgeon he is.
You know that scene in Home Alone (also directed by CC) when Macaulay Culkin slaps his face and screams? Or when Rupert Grint (seeing a pattern?) looks belatedly shocked at something crazy that happened at Hogwarts? Pretty much RENT in a nutshell, perfectly exemplified when Maureen and Joanne arrive at the end. Adam Pascal looks down, pauses as if thinking, Hmm, I wonder who that girl they’re carrying is? I wonder if it could be Mimi, who we’ve all been looking for? Oh, look, they’ve just said it’s Mimi. Hang on, let’s look over here at Anthony Rapp for a minute. I wonder if he think it’s Mimi? Looks like it. Okay. “Mimi!!!!” Granted, he’s not the finest actor of the bunch, but I don’t think that was his idea.
A lot of sung lines were changed into spoken dialogue, which kind of makes sense, but guess who the co-writer was? So, this careful transfer consisted mostly of having the actors speak the rhyming, coupled lines they would have previously
sung. The actors looked as awkward saying their lines as they sounded. And some songs were cut to trim the 2:30 show down to two hours. With that in mind, why did we have to watch the new and stupid ‘Maureen & Joanne make a cute
gay commitment’ complete with ceremony? The one non-forced joke in the film was not worth cutting “We’re Okay,” “Goodbye Love,” or the voicemails.
The weirdest choice: making the action of Act One take place over a number of days instead of just Christmas Eve. It in no way improved or altered the plot, and it just made several people in the theater laugh out loud as lines of songs/dialogue were awkwardly changed to fit.
Grrrr. A list of what turned a fun and moving musical into a piece of tripe:
- The stupid speeding up of “Rent;”
- Roger’s “Glory” flashbacks that made it seem like April had just died;
- Mark’s head wound/dream sequence;
- Mimi saying “What’d ya do with my candle?” as she stands over him, holding said candle;
- Maureen’s absurd motorcycle cam;
- the changes made to “Over the Moon” that took out Idina Menzel’s impressive notes;
- Collins mincing about like a meth addict;
- Angel and Collins are happy, happy, happity-hap-hap, happy!!!;
- the new/rockstar orchestration in general;
- having to look at Maureen and Joanne through each others’ underarms during “Take Me or Leave Me;”
- Adam Pascal’s trip to Sedona Country;
- Mark shouting his phone call to Alexi Darling to the world instead;
- Mimi’s finger twitch;
- trying to recreate the very last moment of the play with an uninspiring shot from Mark’s film;
- giving Chris Columbus the reigns to this pony, so basically minute one of pre-production.
Sigh. Okay, Idina Menzel and Anthony Rapp, yea! And, I still cried a little at the end, but only because I’m a big pansy, and sometimes even cry when I hear the soundtrack. However, it was not hugging-the-stranger-sitting-next-to-me crying.
You don’t deserve those kinds of tears, Chris Columbus.
Postscript: Anthony Rapp looks so cute in Mark’s glasses. But in cast photos on imdb in his normal glasses, he
doesn’t look nearly as attractive. And I realized that Mark has the same glasses as my husband. So maybe I don’t have a crush on him, so much as his square-cut frames.
