Rent - The movie

Having heard a few pieces of the soundtrack, I was not expecting too much from this musical. It started out better than expected, they have assembled a superb, solid cast, all but one a superb singer both as a solid soloist and as ensemble. The one exception was Adam Pascal, who shows hints of a great voice, if only he would stop shouting. He obviously was cast more for his looks.

Wilson Jermaine Heredia as the tranny Angel is just amazing. If there was any justice in the film industry, he would be carting around a wagon load of gold statuettes. At least he got a Tony for his Broadway performance. He reminded me a lot of the leading character in cinchntouch's favorite Thai film. Anthony Rapp is too WASP for the role of the Jewish film maker, but he does a yeoman's job with a ton of lines and songs.

The show starts with the total cliche song Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes - at least it has a pleasant sound to it. As the show progresses, the songs get less and less tuneful, and more and more long. There's a lot of gospel-inspired music, which I mostly fast-forwarded through because I can't stand gospel. But I know a great performance when I hear one, and both Jesse L. Martin and Tracie Thoms wail with the best of 'em.

All in all, not a film I could identify with. My apartment in the slums of Bangkok was less squalid than the digs these folks are living in. And who ever heard of a slum apartment which went the whole width of the building? In NYC? Two people sharing about 1500 square feet is what it looked like.

No memorable tunes, no lyrics worth making a tag line out of. Solid acting, every now and then some good directing, but there were a lot of experiments in editing and such which did not work. Costumes were mostly uninspired, except for Angel's. Not worth any more words.