"Rent" editorials

[sidneybruhl]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 11:59am

We've now graduated from reviews to editorials. I found this misguided piece from the Boston Globe interesting. Seems as though "Rent" has killed the movie musical yet again, at least according to The Globe.

http://www.americantheaterweb.com/News/newsinframe.asp?id=118938
Updated On: 11/25/05 at 11:59 AM

[my2cents]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 12:22pm

Haha so i guess the Producers will be the movie musicals version of the final scare like by a killer in a horror movie. Or will it be its ressurection.

What ever you think of the film. The author could have waited a month to see how producers does. Cause if producers does well, they look like a big idiot, and if it fails then they would have had two points to thier editorial.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 1:03pm

This review is so been there, done that. The same tirade against RENT's inauthenticity we've heard for a decade. Like it or not, Larson's stylistic MO was to romanticize the lower east side scene, not to "capture" it in its warts-n'all grittiness. He was working in the tradition of Puccini's LA BOHEME, and though one can disagree with Laron's big-heartedness, it was a point of view, a take, a spin--not an artist's shortcoming on display. When people dis RENT because the characters "burst into song," well, it would be just as "inauthentic" if they burest into Ramones' esque ditties. It's the bursting, not the songs themselves.

It's like bitchin about West Side Story because the Jets and Sharks wouldn't sing Bernstein, no? They wouldn't sing, period. Either you want to go to that sylistic place, or you don't.

[Marquise]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 1:15pm

Sounds to me like the reviewer never cared for it to begin with.

[Chloe]

Posted: 11/25/05 at 1:23pm

Exactly, Marquise, and that seems to be true of a lot of the negative reviews. (Looking at my Google page of reviews, it's almost comical how the positive and negative ones alternate, each with its own bad "rent" pun - "Rent Past Due" or "New Lease on Rent.")

The West Side Story analogy is really good. I don't know if there were complaints at the time about the sanitizing of NYC gangs, but I wouldn't be surprised. Does anyone care about that now?

[my2cents]

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

Great points AUGGIE. :)