It's not the play, but that's not a bad thing

Author's Rating:

Pros: Emotionally powerful on every level; scenes that will live in your mind for years

Cons: Rosario Dawson, mostly; some camera angles feel awkward.

The Bottom Line: 
If you've seen the play, you need to see the movie. If you haven't seen the play, you still need to see the movie. Period.

Author's Review
Hollywood, and the entertainment industry in general, is an incestuous business. So it then strikes me as somewhat odd that a 10-year-old play facing waning audiences on Broadway would become the subject of a film, especially considering that there had already been several failed attempts to make it into one. Rent had become a classic of Broadway, even if it never did have the "reinventing" effect many originally foresaw for it in 1996, but it still stands alone as maybe the first true rock opera (the play certainly borders on opera--spoken words only happen in five or six scenes, and they are short).

The movie takes a different approach to the concept. Virtually all of the songs return, more or less intact (although the order of some is changed to fit a revised timeline--details below), but spoken word takes over the majority of the script. This may be blasphemy to some, and it pains me to say this as someone who spent their high school years idolizing the play, even going out of my way (way, way out of my way) to see it a second time, but I actually prefer director Chris Columbus' decision to use spoken words for most of the script. It hurts to say this as well, but the movie is just easier to follow than the play.

The Rent purists will be let down by this, but one must keep in mind the medium. With a stage, the settings have to be limited. You just can't have burning eviction notices raining down into the street, as we do in the stellar opening scene that does the play justice in spectacular fashion. With film, things can be staged (say, an engagement reception for Maureen and Joanne that goes horribly--and hilariously--awry) and shown that the play just could never have gone into, and the film is all the better for it.

Another thing that will tick the purists off is that the timeline was changed somewhat. For one, we now have a definite year for the events--late 1989 through 1990. Two, whereas the entire first act of the play takes place on Christmas Eve, the movie slows things down a bit, stretching the first act's events out between Christmas Eve and midnight on New Year's Eve. This actually makes a lot of sense, as there's no intermission in the movies to account for the passage of time. It also slows down the Roger/Mimi and Collins/Angel subplots to a somewhat more realistic rate, and the Maureen/Joanne subplot is slowed down even more than the above two. While the actual passage of real time is actually more compact, this approach gives the audience a better understanding of what's going on and allows them to process it more fully than the play's sometimes-rushed pacing did.

Now that we're done holding a magnifying glass up to the film and seeing how closely it mirrors the play, we have to step back and take a close look at the movie aspects of it--acting, directing, and music.

The acting is surprisingly solid for a group composed largely of Broadway vets with little movie experience (barring Jesse L. Martin and Rosario Dawson). There are tremendous differences between Broadway acting and film acting, and you can see--sometimes all too clearly--who has more experience on the big screen than who. Overall, the main cast does a wonderful job, but there is one exception.

Rosario Dawson is awful.

I recognize that some people will say, "Oh, you're just panning her because she's the only major cast member who wasn't in the original Broadway production."

Well no. I'm not. Rosario Dawson is awful. Her singing is pretty good, I'll give her that, and she delivers her spoken lines convincingly more often than not. The problem is in her blocking. She hams it up, overacting to a Shatneresque level at times. I know Dawson is a better actress than this--she was amazing in Sin City, but for whatever reason, she just misses the mark in a big way here, and the film suffers for it. When one of the five characters who the movie really revolves around is played by an actress who just can't seem to get it right, the rest of the cast suffers.

The directing...where do I go with this? There are some scenes that will be burned into the minds of viewers forever--the flaming eviction notices pouring into the street come to mind immediately, as do a funeral scene and the grand finale--but there are some close-up shots of actors' faces as they sing that just feel awkward. On the whole, though, Chris Columbus does a very solid job, and he eases the concerns of people like myself, who were terrified of what the director of Home Alone would do to the play.

And, of course, the music. As mentioned before, virtually all of the major songs return intact, and most all of the lyrics are kept of the minor songs that are either turned into spoken dialogue or dropped completely. The songs that are performed are performed excellently, of course, by the cast, and staged well be Columbus. Even the "La Vie Boheme" riot, which I was certain would be butchered, not only comes in largely intact, but even the blocking stands mostly unchanged. It's the most noticeable nod to the play, and the closest the movie comes to mirroring it.

As for age appropriateness, don't let the PG-13 rating fool you. That rating scared me originally, as if Rent were a direct copy of the play, it would undoubtedly be an R. The PG-13 is maintained (barely) by cutting out a couple uses of the dreaded F-word (though it is used twice in the song "Tango, Maureen"--and thank God they didn't change those lyrics, or I may well have walked out then and there) and cutting out the very, very explicit "Halloween" orgy sequence entirely. You won't miss it. The way it was replaced is not only much more impressive, but it's also much more powerful--especially if you know what's coming.

For those of you who saw me say that "La Vie Boheme" was kept almost entirely intact and wondered if that was intact as well, rest easy. The full moon of Maureen is shown quite prominently, retaining the hilarity of the gag using it.

It's hard to compare the movie to the play. I'm going to take flak in the comments for saying this, especially after admitting to my near-fanatical history with the play, but I enjoyed the movie more. It was just easier to follow, and it's paced better. That said, if you go in expecting the play, you'll leave sorely disappointed. The film and the play are different works, and they should be treated as such, no matter how many similarities they bear.

As a closing, I just want to re-emphasize how powerful this movie is. During many scenes, the entire theater was cracking up. During a few scenes, the majority of the audience was bordering on tears. During one scene, most of the theater was crying. Literally. There were several sobs coming from different parts of the auditorium, and I even had to dry my eyes more than once. The true test of this movie's power for the masses who haven't seen the play will come this weekend, as much of the first-night audience came in decked out in Rent gear. Maybe all those sobs were because so many people knew what was coming?

All the same, Rent clearly deserves at least a nomination for Best Picture. I haven't seen a movie as powerful for years. I haven't seen a movie that examines the highs and lows of emotion so thoroughly ever. Whether it gets that nod is debatable, but whether it deserves it is not.

Go in with an open mind and an open ear. You won't be let down.