All Rent Reviews (Place Here)- Page 26

[Marquise]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 2:04pm

oh. no. they. di'nt.

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 2:06pm

looks like they did. HAHA!!!

[SweetQintheLights]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 2:08pm

Spiderdj- You had to create that on your computer because that is the craziest thing I have ever seen. How much are they? I want them just to laugh at.

That is ridiculously over the top...WAY OVER THE TOP.

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 2:10pm

haha. Nope, it is for real. And just look at the price. YIKES!!!


"Take me for what I am"--A Barbie Doll

[SweetQintheLights]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 2:11pm

I would have done it for 10$ for the laugh but to pay over 50$ for a laugh---no.

I wish I was a millionaire.

[Marquise]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 2:12pm

they've gotta be friggin' kidding me.

jeezuz....

does the Mimi one come with accesories like a hyperdermic needle?

how about Mimi's Dream Squat and Strip Club Playset?

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 2:14pm

If you look around ebay and put in "Rent Movie" you will be amazed how much people are paying for iron on t-shirts and whatnot . . . although I did find some interesting things that I may buy or ask for Christmas. But, yeah . . . INSANE!!! The only way I would pay that much for a Mimi and Maureen doll, is if it was anatomically correct.

[jerseygurl]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 3:16pm

'Rent'
*A commodified faux bohemia, the film elicits the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children's beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots and Gandhi in Apple ads.


'Rent'


How to put this. "Rent" is a Chris Columbus adaptation of a smash-hit Broadway musical about artistic integrity, counterculture, political activism and squatters' rights that may have been the most successful moneymaking venture ever staked on selling the idea that "selling out" is bad.


It's hard to put the experience of watching "Rent" into words, especially after "Team America: World Police" said everything there was to say about the play with puppets, and so succinctly. ("Everyone has AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS! Everyone has AIDS!")

But I'll try.

"Rent" is commodified faux bohemia on a platter, eliciting the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children's beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots, Mahatma Gandhi in Apple ads. It's about art, activism and counterculture in the same way that a poster of a kitten hanging from a tree branch ("Hang in There!") is about commitment and heroic perseverance. It represents everything the people it pretends to stand for hate. And it doesn't even know it. Watching it feels sort of like watching "Touched by an Angel" with your grandmother and realizing that although you're clearly looking at the same thing, you're seeing something entirely different. It's awkward to behold.

The movie begins on a stage, with all of the characters lined up singing "Seasons of Love." The theater setting is the movie's single reference to its origins, but though the characters soon leave the stage for good, the movie never really does. Compared to a masterpiece of the genre such as "Cabaret," "Rent" seems to find its new status as a film more embarrassing than liberating, and it clings to its own theatricality for dear life, as though it were Blanche DuBois and someone had just flipped on the lights.

It's Dec. 24, 1989, and Mark Cohen (Anthony Rapp), an earnest filmmaker with a Bolex camera strapped to his handlebars, rides through the streets of Lower Manhattan, earnestly photographing homeless people and singing.

Returning home to his Alphabet City loft, he finds his heat and electricity have been turned off. His roommate, Roger (Adam Pascal), a musician, informs him that they've received an eviction notice from their former friend, roommate and fellow artist Benny (Taye Diggs), who has married up, up and away to the landlord's daughter.

Meanwhile, their friend Tom Collins (Jesse L. Martin), a philosophy professor who just got fired from MIT for his "theory of actual reality," is mugged in an alley, where he's rescued by a loving drag queen named Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia); and a heroin-addicted exotic dancer named Mimi Marquez (Rosario Dawson) swoons over her upstairs neighbor Roger, who assiduously ignores her. Wouldn't you know it — everyone has AIDS. Roger, Mimi, Angel and Tom do, anyway. The rest of the gang is merely broke and dysfunctional.

Soon, Benny shows up, offering to reinstate rent-free living if Mark and Roger help stop a protest, planned by Mark's ex-girlfriend Maureen (Idina Menzel). This would pave the way for his new "state of the art virtual digital interactive studio." Maureen, a narcissistic performance artist, has recently left Mark for a lawyer named Joanne (Tracie Thoms), but Mark and Roger would rather starve, freeze and sing about it than lift one finger toward the neighborhood's gentrification.

Not that you blame them. Or you wouldn't, if the movie didn't make it so hard not to roll your eyes every five minutes. For all its passionate defense of bohemian living ("Rent" is cribbed from Puccini's "La Bohème"), much of it delivered from atop a table at a local restaurant where the bourgeoisie stick around to be dutifully épaté, the movie's supposed admiration for the lives of noncommercial artists doesn't touch its withering disdain for their work.

How is anyone supposed to get behind a guy whose "films" are just home movies of the homeless and his soon-to-be homeless friends? (In one scene, a homeless woman begins to call him on it, but ends up just deriding him for being poor. "Hey, artist, do you have a dollar? I didn't think so." Oh, snap.) Or behind a blocked songwriter who spends an entire year agonizing over a song that turns out to be a bunch of moldy clichés set to power chords? Or a performance artist whose "multimedia protest" would make Laurie Anderson's eyes bleed? Only the fashion-obsessed drag queen and the uptight lawyer avoid the lethal combination of pretension, sentimentality, self-congratulation and posturing that more or less characterizes their friends' work — hey, everybody needs fashion and laws.

Well, so what. "Rent" isn't about work, anyway. It's about love and death on the Lower East Side, before it became the kind of place where people would pay lots of money to see "Rent." While Angel and Tom get the issue of T-cell counts out of the way in the first few minutes, it takes Roger much longer to spill the beans to Mimi. ("You tooo?" "Me tooo.")

After the flurry of the initial couplings — Tom and Angel, Mimi and Roger, Maureen and Joanne, Mark and his artistic integrity — things start to come apart. Mimi can't stay off the smack, so Roger walks away. Maureen can't stop chasing girls, so Joanne gives up. Mark gets approached by a show called "Buzzline," which loves his "hip 'n' edgy" footage of the protest and ensuing police riot, so he sells out. (It says something, though I'm not sure what, exactly, that Sarah Silverman, in a brief appearance as the slick TV executive who happily purchases Mark's hip 'n' edginess for $3,000, comes across as the only believable character in the film — she's so fake, she's real.)

The most amazing thing about "Rent" (and be sure to look for that adjective on a movie poster near you, with an exclamation point attached) is how painfully dated and achingly false the movie feels, when its central concerns are real and more relevant than ever. How is that possible? Because to scratch "Rent's" Gap fashion grunge-wear surface is to hit a mother lode of disconnect and contempt for the very things it has co-opted.

Is it fair, or even seemly, to expect even a modicum of authenticity or cool from a Hollywood adaptation of a Broadway musical? Probably not. But this constant corporate exhumation and trotting around of counterculture's corpse — it's not fun anymore.

You know what would be fun? If Columbus had turned the story inside out and made the rapacious developers and marauding executives the heroes of the story. Why not? To the victor goes the official version, etc. At least that might have rung true.

Plus, I have a great title for it. They could have called it "Own."

[Marquise]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 3:20pm

jerseygurl you should really be told that cutting and pasting someone else's copyrighted review is a no-no. if you wanted others on this board to read it you should have provided a link to it.

and besides you're kind of late in the game with that review. it was linked to the board days ago.

if you were gonna provide someone else's review you might as well have provided one the board hasn't read yet.
Updated On: 11/25/05 at 03:20 PM

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 3:27pm

**snap, snap with a head twist . . . snap*

[QueenMuppet]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 5:13pm

'Just so you guys know, I meant that Pascals way of walking in that specific scene was awkward. He should have been directed otherwise.'

Maybe he didn't have the right footwear for the cliffs!

By the way, when I got up this morning I caught a review on NY1 and it was very positive. Can't remember the name of the reviewer unfortunately...

QM

[DBillyP]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 6:43pm

Marquise, although I didn't like the film, Mimi's appearance actually didn't bother me. I was simply gathering various criticisms to use in my hyperbolic post.

[IveGottaBeME]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 6:50pm

Rent was a beautiful movie... the theater was snifling like crazy when I saw it today.

[best12bars]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 7:03pm

I didn't really want to write a formal review of this film, due to the very personal nature and effect it has had on me. I will start with my "qualifier" and then see if I can put it all into words...

The Qualifier: I knew Jon Larson when I lived in New York in the mid-'80s. We both worked at the same theatre in Michigan, although Jon got his union card and left the year before I started working there. A couple of years later, when I got "unionized" myself and moved to the Big Apple, we had mutual Michigan friends that were all starting out in the city, and that's how we met. I remember listening to Jon play us his music in a living room full of friends and talking passionately about the stories and the songs he was working on. This was not long before he started writing "Rent," incidentally. He was so excited that Stephen Sondheim had liked his music and had made a point of telling him so. He seemed to be on cloud nine about that (understandably). We listened to his latest demo tape with Marin Mazzie singing. We called him "Marv" (after Marvin Hamlisch). This was a running joke started by his close friends Marin and Scott Burkell, and Jon seemed to enjoy that and take to it in stride. He was a great guy. As nice as he was talented. So... several years later in Los Angeles, when I picked up a Newsweek magazine in an office to read about Jon's new show opening Off-Broadway... and in the first sentence, found out that our old Bohemian "Marv" had scored these amazing reviews and had also DIED suddenly... I fell immediately into a state of shock that I have never quite been able to disassociate myself from, whenever I see, hear, or talk about his "Rent." It's surreal to me. It feels like it happened to someone else, not him, not us... not this.

I walked in today to the movie theatre with a few "preconceptions," most of which proved to be wrong. I went in not thinking much of Chris Columbus as a director. He's not terrible in my eyes, just "ordinary" in his approach. I was a little worried about the new cast members and how they would fit in with a group so uniformly bonded by their experiences with the material. Again, I was wrong on both of these counts.

Let me start by saying that "Rent" is a great show. It's NOT a perfect show, and Jon knew that. It was in very good shape, and he knew that too. He was proud of it and rightfully so. But knowing Jon, he would have tinkered with it after the (ultimately successful) Off-Broadway run... changed things, edited things, and tightened and focused things for any possible Broadway run... but because he was robbed of that opportunity, the show was frozen in an "almost there" state. Forever a work-in-progress, like the painting of George Washington that isn't quite complete. I've grown to love that painting for what it is, not wishing for everything to be filled in and perfect. Just as I have grown to love "Rent" the exact same way.

Columbus did a terrific job of delivering Larson's "Rent" as a movie, faults and all. His use of camera movement to assist the heightened emotions and his eye for composition and content were really outstanding. I wasn't expecting that.

The cast surprised me as well in several ways. I was expecting a confident and steady hand from the ensemble of original cast members who knew these roles so well, but was a little mistaken by that assumption. The ones who don't have much (if any) experience in front of a camera faltered a bit initially, but NEVER stumbled completely. Most often, they worked a bit too hard at conveying their emotions. Not that they were phony or "stagy," but just a tad too MUCH, particularly in the first part of the film. I'm talking about Pascal, Heredia and Menzel in particular. The other original members who have had more time in front of a camera seemed to do better (Martin, Rapp and Diggs). All you have to do is look at the scenes with Roger and Mimi together. Dawson is a film actor, and she knows how much her eyes can show thought and feeling on screen. How much a single split-second glance can speak volumes. It comes off as effortless and natural, while Pascal seemed to work harder to show us his emotions. This was true in his scenes with Rapp, as well. Anthony knows the camera well enough already. Adam will learn to trust its lens as he gets more experience in future projects, which I'm sure he will have. And the other "new gal" Tracie knocked me out in all possible ways. She has a bright future in all media, if she wants it.

I was thinking how strange it is to watch a film that is 90% sung. "Moulin Rouge" was so stylized that I bought it without question. It was a fantasy-pastiche that created a world where anything was possible and even ultimately expected. But to see people singing virtually non-stop in a quasi-realistic, often intimate setting is a bit taxing after a while. And I'm not sure I've ever seen it pulled off completely successfully. That could be a flaw of the genre itself. An "opera-movie" is still not a proven or reliable format. "Rent" comes very close to pulling it off here... and I think "Jesus Christ Superstar" (the original movie) and "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" do so as well. But others ("Evita" and "Phantom" and even "Tommy") often leave me with a gnawing feeling of claustrophobia. I find myself wanting to come up for air a little more often than we get to, because of the confines of the material.

All of that said, there were many shining and thrilling moments: "Take Me As I Am" being at the top of the list. This was where Idina completely dazzled in front of the camera, and she and Tracie rose to a new height together in the film. Martin and Heredia's "I'll Cover You," as well as Martin's dramatic scene at Angel's memorial, were both terrific and very effective.

I found myself in tears several times watching this movie. I guess that was to be expected with my history. There was a time years ago, when I lived in New York City and knew people like these characters on screen. I knew the era. I knew the feeling. Hell, I knew the author. And I kept picturing "Marv" sitting in the audience right there with us... beaming proudly from ear to ear.

Loving every damn minute of it.

Updated On: 11/25/05 at 07:03 PM

[Cruel_Sandwich]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 9:20pm

MY THOUGHTS ON THE RENT MOVIE

OVERALL RATING: *** out of ****

WHAT WORKED:

- Seasons of Love
- Anthony Rapp (In everything but Tango Maureen)
- Rosario Dawson (In everything)
- Jesse L. Martin (In EVERYTHING! OMERGERD HE OWNS THIS MOVIE)
- Wilson Heredia (In everything though I wish I could have seen him more)
- Collins/Angel relationship
- Tracey Thoms
- Santa Fe
- La Vie Boheme (Best part in the movie, In my humble opinion)
- Out Tonight
- Title Song
- You'll See
- Cinematography (Especially with the burning trash)
- Finale B
- Ending shot

WHAT DIDN'T WORK:

- Life Support (Worked onstage, felt awkwardly out of place here and added nothing)
- Some musical numbers needed more energy (Come on Chris, you got Dollies and steadicams! USE 'EM!)
- Adam Pascal
- Not enough Wilson
- Not enough Idina
- I don't want to get too technical but Mark really should have brought release forms before filming people. Verbal agreements don't really work.

Yet, all in all, it was a very very solid movie. Though it works better onstage with a live audience that can respond to the performers, it's a rather entertaining and emotional film. Good job, Chris Columbus for breaking out of the kiddie grotto yet not succumbing to the mawkish sentimentality that marred Bicentenial Man. I loved it and hope that it makes these castmembers bigger names in the film industry.

And now we wait for Producers...

[xoxRogue]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 10:03pm

"Loving every damn minute of it."

Exactly the same here.

[spiderdj82]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 10:35pm

here, here

[jerseygurl]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 11:05pm

Sorry. I may have "cut & paste" -ed but I did attribute it. Also, I followed the subject - put reviews here (NOT comments on same). Fortunately for me, my life if full enough that I haven't had the time to read all 600+ posts. I saw RENT on Bway opening night and found the show sophomoric and the staging deriverative. And, a few days later, Sam Shepard asked me if he thought he'd be more successful if he "off-ed" himself. I know that's like throwing gas on the Jonathan Larson fires, (and yes scathing because Jonathan's death was the loss of a promising - but not yet fully formed - talent) but RENT is successful popular art, not classic. There is obviously room for both but let's not confuse them.

[Marquise]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 11:08pm

oh well i'm soooooooo glad to hear your life is so FULL dear.
and the way you're coming off there's something more you're *quite* FULL OF as well...


...but i digress


so sorry i don't mean to take up so much of your precious time, but you see i have nothing better to do....

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 11:18pm

B12B, your review gave me chills.

Thanks for sharing.

[mikewood]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 11:53pm

Long post, lots of spoilers:

I'm coming a little late into this thread and wanted to make some observations about some of the choices made in the movie and my impressions:

First, I almost loved it. I guess I'm a "Renthead"....I've seend the show 9 times: six on Broadway, twice at the Wang Center in Boston and once at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, although I'm certainly not a fanatical as some are. I tried truly hard to be openminded about all the choices made in the movie as I understood that some choices had to be made to appease a movie going public, the majority of which I would hazard a guess hadn't seen the Broadway show.

Next point, I loved the start of the movie with isolation spots on the leads during the opening credits. I got chills.

I was uncomfortable with the straight dialogue used to bridge the gap between the musical numbers. I wish even the spoken dialogue, at least what was lifted from the show was done sing-songy. I didn't understand this choice; I don't think these lyrics would have been a distraction to the average movie goer Joe or Jane. I really missed the sung answering machine messages.

I loved that April was given a face, form and figure. In short, she became a character.

I thought that Rosario Dawson's acting was fantastic and her singing to be average.

I was disappointed that "One Song Glory" came to a natural end, and did not end with Mimi's interruption. I thought that this choice took away from "One Song Glory" 's unfinished nature. This choice cheated the song....my favorite song from the show.

Jesse L. Martin is a truly brilliant actor in my estimation and shame on me for never noticing this before. I think of all the OBC he made the smoothest transistion from stage to screen. And congratulations to the filmmakers for not cheating the love story of Angel and Tom Collins. It was sweet and poignant and physical as it should be.

I don't mean to be "disloyal" to Fredi but Traci Thoms was a fantastic addition to the cast. Not only did she acquit herself brilliantly as an actress and all of Joanne's nuance; her singing was top notch. She was a credit to the show.

Didn't like the out of body "Tango Maureen". Didn't like the dreamscape aspect, didn't like seeing Maureen so early. Idina looked Faaaaan-tastic however....so maybe I did like it afterall.

We went inside the "Catscratch Club". Interesting choice. At first, the Renthead in me opposed it but I decided it was a great establishing point for Mimi. However, my complaint was they decided to make it a high-end Vegas type club. These clubs don't exist in NYC or anywhere else on the East Coast. The club shoudl have been a lot seedier but I guess we had to be concerned with the rating.

Terrific choice to have an establishing shot of the Twin Towers, not only was it an uniquely New York touch, setting the show in the right time and year was a wonderful choice done subtlely here, more blatantly later.

Benny was softened too much. He needed to have been more of a jerk.

I didn't like that they cut the Catholic Church refusing to bury Angel.

I certainly didn't like the choice to cut the argument between Mark and Roger before Roger goes to Santa Fe. It cut the legs out of the reconcilialtion when he got back.

Overall, a strong B+ of an effort!

Add-in:
This was the first time in a long, long time I had tears in my eyes when Angel died.

Updated On: 11/26/05 at 11:53 PM

[meagan9848]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 12:58am

Does anyone know what Ebert and Roeper said?

[pab]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 1:00am

Ebert's Review

[greenegirl87]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 9:03am

http://epilot2.hamptonroads.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:LowLevelEntityToPrintGifMSIE_VIRGINIANPILOT&Type=text/html&Locale=english-skin-custom&Path=VirginianPilot/2005/11/26&ChunkNum=0&ID=Ar05400

thats a review from my local paper, in Southeastern Virginia( Virginia Beach/ Norfolk)

its mixed.... mostly positive!

[Trisky]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 11:40am

Included in the magazine version of the EW review is also a three page spread of black and white photos from the premiere. The title of the article is "Raising the Rent."