The Reel Critic

Author: BRI CAVALLARO



I'll be the first to admit I met my first big crush at the stage door of "Rent" when I was 12. When I met the only boy waiting for autographs, I knew it was meant to be. (He came out a year and a half later.) We both loved the show for the bright spot it put in our mundane middle-school lives­­-the homeless, the transvestites, the heroin and AIDS crises should have been so far removed from our Illinoisian lives as to be irrelevant, but composer and lyricist Jonathan Larson's lyrics were so catchy and earnest that we had no choice but to care about his collection of rag-tag bohemians.

Larson had adapted his show from Puccini's "La Boheme," substituting HIV for their Tuberculosis epidemic, but the overriding themes of love and living in the moment remain in the choruses of "Measure your life in love" and "No day but today" that echo through his characters' Alphabet City lofts. Of course, in the triumph of "Rent," like in most success stories, there's a bittersweet note: Larson died of an aortic aneurysm on his kitchen floor the night before his show's final dress rehearsal. He never lived to see his success, or, as it stands, the movie adaptation.

This is why walking into a New York theater last week to see the film adaptation was terrifying. Chris Columbus, the director, is best known for the first two Harry Potter movies. Stephen Chbosky, who adapted the play from stage to screen, is famous for his troubled adolescents in "Perks of Being a Wallflower." How would the original Broadway cast reprise their roles, more than 10 years later? Which of the songs could they keep without dragging the film out to three hours? And, with the New York AIDS crisis not as dire as it was in the late 1980s, how would the show translate to modern audiences?

Columbus' solution to the last question was to make his "Rent" a period piece. The film opens with the line December 24th, 9 p.m., 1989 delivered by Mark (Anthony Rapp), a struggling filmmaker. His once-rockstar roommate, Roger (Adam Pascal), is coming off of six months of heroin withdrawal; he hasn't been able to write a song since his girlfriend died of AIDS. The two are about to be evicted by Benny (Taye Diggs), their landlord and former friend, unless they stop the performance piece that Maureen (Idina Menzel), Mark's ex-girlfriend, has organized to protest the demolition of a tent city. There's also Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), the tranvestite street-drummer and his lover Collins (Jesse L. Martin), a former MIT professor. The additions to the original Broadway cast are Rosario Dawson as Mimi, an exotic dancer and junkie and Tracie Thoms as Joanne, Maureen's lesbian lawyer lover.

Thoms and Dawson more than hold their own. In fact, I'd say that their singing and acting might be the strongest in the film. Columbus opens "Rent" with some incredibly cheesy opening numbers. I'm sorry, but do we really need the burning eviction notices during the title track or the awful 80s music video flashbacks of Roger's relationship with his dead girlfriend during "One Song Glory"? We don't, and Dawson's entrance into Roger's apartment and the film is a welcome breath of fresh air. Her performance is edgy and compelling, especially in comparison to Pascal's overcooked turn as Roger. The weakest moments of the film occur while he's onscreen there's the Britney Spears 'Not Yet A Girl, Not Yet A Woman' canned footage of Santa Fe as he drives cross-country in 'What You Own', for starters. On the same topic, Jesse L. Martin's performance of 'Santa Fe' comes across as slightly out-of-place. Here, Columbus sets the song on a subway car and it's hard not to cringe as Collins somersaults over seats, singing some of Larson's weakest lyrics.

But when the show sings, it sings. Columbus is at his best when he's directing snapshots and not huge ensemble numbers. Rapp is fantastic as the narrator and observer. I loved watching him wind his camera as he biked through a perfectly reproduced East Village and the show-stopping "La Vie Boheme" went over amazingly well thanks to his self-deprecating performance. Surprisingly, Maureen and Joanne's relationship is one of the high points of the film. Columbus' decision to set "Take Me or Leave Me" at their engagement party was brilliant and hilarious and Menzel's performance piece "Over the Moon" is excellent over-the-top satire. Heredia's Angel is as charming on screen as on stage. He won a Tony for this performance for very good reason.

The film vacillated between A+ and D- material, but despite some of the overwrought scenes and the aging actors, it ultimately translates the love and death in this bohemian community fairly well. I sat between a friend who still listened to the soundtrack daily and another who, in the first few minutes, said, "Wait, why are they singing?" We all walked out of the theater sheepishly singing the final song.