'Rent' a Wreck
There's not much to like about this mawkish rock opera
By Andy Klein
Early in Team America: World Police, Gary, the hero, is seen on stage, singing the anthem "Everyone Has AIDS" in a production of Lease:
"My grandma and my dog Ol' Blue,
The pope has got it, and so do you,
C'mon everybody, we got quilting to do,
We gotta break down these barricades,
everyone has AIDS!"
It was widely interpreted as a parody of the musical Rent, but incorrectly, I think. "Parody" suggests "exaggeration for comic effect," and, now that I've seen Chris Columbus's new film version of Rent, I don't see where the exaggeration was. Are the Lease lyrics any worse than Rent's "What kind of people?" "People with AIDS [dramatic pause] people like me"?
For those unfamiliar with the late Jonathan Larson's stage musical, Rent is about a group of impoverished young people living in New York's Alphabet City, mostly trying to balance making art with paying the rent. They are two gay couples, one of each gender; two straight men involved at various points with the same woman; and another man who seems unable to get laid, probably because he's the whiny Jewish guy. At least four of them have AIDS. They sing ... they dance ... they express their feelings earnestly and endlessly ... one and a half of them die.
Rent uses Puccini's La Boheme as its template in exactly the same way that West Side Story used Romeo and Juliet. So Rodrigo the poet becomes Roger the songwriter (Adam Pascal); Marcello the painter becomes Mark the filmmaker (Anthony Rapp); Benoit the landlord becomes Benny the landlord (Taye Diggs); and like that. For whatever reason, Mimi gets to stay Mimi (Rosario Dawson).
Over the years, I've regularly knocked Andrew Lloyd Webber for lifting melodies from Puccini. Larson seems to have taken a page from Lloyd Webber ... and read it upside down. That is, he's lifted the story from a Puccini opera without lifting the melodies (with the brief exception of a few bars of "Musetta's Waltz," handily the best musical moment in the film). News flash: Puccini operas are not revered for their stories, which are frequently contrived and even ridiculous; Puccini transcends those problems because his music is so glorious.
But Jonathan Larson is not Puccini. In fact, he isn't even Neil Diamond. (Is that Diamond's "Cherry Cherry" or the Capitols' "Cool Jerk" that he retreads in "La Vie Boheme"?) His approach is a textbook case of throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater. Then serving it to the guests. Then calling it champagne.
Do the movie's problems stem from Larson's material? Or are they the fault of Columbus, who on his best creative days rises to the level of Only Kind of Awful?
The first time I heard a radio ad for the L.A. production, I didn't know what the show was and didn't pay much attention until I heard the main song snippet, which I initially mistook for an old Fifth Dimension track. (And not one of the good ones, either.) It immediately grabbed my attention: "My God," I thought, "that's one of the worst songs I've ever heard, both melodically and lyrically." Take incredibly faux-Ecclesiastes, touchy-feely, pseudo-profound lyrics straight out of some Philosophy 101 course at a college that has lost its accreditation. Then mix in the clunkiness of the melodic twist at the end of each verse - it modulates to a minor key, I think - for instance, on the line "or the way that he died."
"If that's the snippet that's supposed to make me want to plunk down a day or two's salary for a ticket, " I thought, "I don't want to even imagine the rest."
Now, thanks to the magic of cinema, I've heard the rest (or much of it, since several numbers were cut), and, while most of it is better than that sample - something that could equally be said of Terry Jacks singing "Seasons in the Sun," those fucking dogs barking "Jingle Bells," or any random track on Jerry Lewis Just Sings - most of the songs reminded me of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is" or Rupert Holmes's "Piña Colada Song" or some tune from Hair. All of which I'd rather not be reminded of.
In two-thirds of the songs, the lyrics are painfully flat and on the nose. On stage, everything was sung - it was technically an opera - which might explain why people sing stuff like "I'm feeling down, life has no hope, you go to the club, I'll stay here and mope" (not a real excerpt but close enough to pass).
Fans of the original may be distressed to know that Columbus has converted some of these ditties, including the answering-machine messages and narration, to spoken dialogue. It's precisely this sort of change that makes me reluctant to blame everything on Larson. If all the lines were sung, maybe the effect would be different.
But could anything have saved this hodgepodge of pastiches of a dozen different pop idioms? With mawkish lyrics that sound like the poetry of a dewy-eyed, oversensitive freshman who's just discovered Art?
Then there's the ending. (IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW IT ENDS - AND YOU ACTUALLY CARE - SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH!) Larson pulls out the pandering E.T. trick: Jerk tears from everyone - or at least from those who are neither asleep nor doing a Mystery Science Theater 3000-style commentary - and then go, "Whoops! Not really dead! Just kidding! Here's your happy ending!" Puccini was hardly bashful about jerking tears whenever possible, but even he didn't try to have it both ways like that. When he killed off his Mimi, she damn well stayed dead. And Spielberg at least had the decency to spare us an inspirational description of E.T.'s near-death experience.
Was there anything I liked in Rent? Well, yes. There are a few duets (or maybe trios) where characters are singing different songs simultaneously, usually as the grand finale of a scene, as in West Side Story and lots of operas. That always gives me a chill, even if, as in this case, I didn't much care for the songs by themselves. It would probably work even with "Seasons in the Sun," "Barking Jingle Bells," and any random track on Jerry Lewis Just Sings. Also: I quite liked the tango number, even though the choreography - as in most of the movie - suggests that no one (except perhaps Wilson Jermaine Heredia) was cast for dancing chops.
One caution for fans: Where the play only identified its time frame as an unspecified year in the early to mid '90s, Columbus has, for whatever reason, moved it to 1989-90. One explanation I've heard rumored is that that's when Columbus himself lived in New York - a reason so pathetically lame that I'm inclined to believe it.
Unfortunately, he then forgot to adjust the cultural references. They may be minor and only of interest to nitpickers, but, Chris, if you're going to change the story to 1989-90, then don't make reference to 1991's Thelma & Louise or to Pee-wee Herman's legal problems, also from 1991.
That Chris Columbus: He really thinks of not everything.
Published: 11/23/2005
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