It seems that every decade a film comes out of left field and creates a trend-setting sensation. It usually tends to be a musical about lower-class or blue collar people who find beauty (and musical release) in the midst of squalor--a theme that has great appeal with Americans who struggle at all class levels. Some examples--"Saturday Night Fever", "Dirty Dancing", "Footloose", "Flashdance", "Strictly Ballroom", "The Full Monty", and, yes, "Grease." It sounds like "Rent" is a conscious, big-budget attempt to make it into this pantheon. I hope it succeeds.
I ask in all honesty/What would life be?/Without a song and a dance, what are we?/So I say "Thank you for the music/For giving it to me."
