I think Chris Colombus' direction for Rent left a lot to be desired. The pacing was jarring as the film lurched from song to song. One my biggest gripes about his direction is the horrible transitions between the numbers. Songs just seemed to come out of nowhere and then they would end abruptly. There was almost no underscore in whole movie.
His staging of some of the songs was also odd. I think it's during "Another Day" when Mimi and Roger are singing on the fire escape then suddenly Mark, Collins, and Angel come around the street corner and join in the song. There's also the infamous
cliff scene during "What You Own". Cutting half of "Goodbye Love" was a major mistake IMHO.
I have an even bigger issue with Stephen Chbosky's screenplay. There couldn't have been more than 20 minutes of spoken dialogue in the film, and much of it was taken directly from the stage show, and it still rhymed when it was spoken.
"You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!" - Betty Parris to Abigail Williams in Arthur Miller's The Crucible
