So it's not just us
I saw Rent on Wednesday night. I've never seen it on Broadway, or off Broadway, or anywhere else. I've, of course, heard 525,600 minutes sung by multiple sources, but I've never heard any of the other songs from the musical. I knew a few things walking into the theater, and these were:
1. It's based off an opera called La Boheme, so it's probably about the Bohemian lifestyle
2. A lot of people have AIDS (so says Matt and Trey)
3. There's a cross-dresser called Angel
4. It's gotten very mixed reviews
That's it. No preconceived notions, no hopes or fears built up by hype. And all this is not to say I don't regret ever seeing Rent before this. I wish very much I had seen it before because now, when I see it on Broadway, I don't think I'll get as much out of it if I hadn't seen it in theaters beforehand. This is a weird and horribly-worded paragraph.
Anyway: I saw it. And I loved it. As in scoured the internet for blogs on it, websites devoted to the musical and the movie, spent my family's iTunes (which I now have to repay them for) on the Soundtrack, and looked up lyrics to the songs they didn't include in the movie. I'm listening to The Tango: Maureen from the original right now. Mmmmm.
But, in all my internet surfing, I've come upon many reviews by critics, all of which have had very diverse opinions. The acting was horrible. The acting was the only redeeming part of the movie The plot is untimely. The plot is timely but was done badly.
It was horrible; it was the best film of the year; it was as good as the musical, it was worse, it was better, they both suck.
Oh my God. My head is spinning. And then I read this.
So, evidently, it's not just a teenage thing. I think whoever wrote this and those kids that migrate through Cary Town daily would get along.
"Rent is commodified faux bohemia on a platter, eliciting the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children's beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots, Mahatma Gandhi in Apple ads. It's about art, activism and counterculture in the same way that a poster of a kitten hanging from a tree branch ("Hang in There!") is about commitment and heroic perseverance. It represents everything the people it pretends to stand for hate. And it doesn't even know it. Watching it feels sort of like watching "Touched by an Angel" with your grandmother and realizing that although you're clearly looking at the same thing, you're seeing something entirely different. It's awkward to behold."
"Is it fair, or even seemly, to expect even a modicum of authenticity or cool from a Hollywood adaptation of a Broadway musical? Probably not. But this constant corporate exhumation and trotting around of counterculture's corpse."
Rent, it seems, is as bad as the posers that shop at Hot Topic, or Avril Lavigne, or MLW kids (when you compare them to the real individuals at Open).
You know what, Miss Los Angeles (city of all things plastic and superficial)? I. don't. care. I'm white, upper middle class, I enjoy Starbucks on occasion even. And I adored it, in all of its hypocrisy and numbing soul-sadness.
You're very right--tickets to Rent are expensive, and, now that the movie's out, yuppies around the country get to empathize with the plight of transvestites with AIDS.
How horrible. That there's now a mainstream movie that brings to light many of the problems with society. A movie that just might force some suburban airhead (who I'm sure you detest with every tofu-eating, yoga-doing, couture-clad bone in your body, Miss Chocano) to rethink her stance on homosexuality, or laugh with a bunch of very poor, very bohemian kids.
But that's not even it.
Rent isn't about selling out, it isn't about fighting the man, it isn't about the fight against suburbia, it isn't even about non-conformity. It's about something obvious, and something rather uncool, at least in the eyes of the hipsters. It's rather overdone in movies, and it's trite to write a musical about something so . . . universal.
Rent's about love, which is what the dogmatic spirit of any Bohemian worships in the first place. Love and life and everything they sing about. Yes, some parts of the movie are cheesy or overdone, but then there are those moments (and there are more than any critic I've seen so far has given credit to) that are vibrant and energetic and lovely. I've seen the movie, and I don't understand the observations that the LA Times review made. Maybe I saw a different film than she did. I don't know. I just remember leaving the theater, and feeling the lyrics to those songs (no matter how cheesy that sounds, it's true).
So see the movie, if you haven't. Forget pretensions, and let yourself laugh at the silly parts instead of turning your nose up at them. Allow yourself to be attached to the evidently unoriginal characters, and believe that Rent is all about La Vie Boheme.
Because it is. And anyone who's ever really listened to Jonathan Larson's music would know it.
EDIT: And PS Miss Chocano: that last sentence of the second quote from your article? It doesn't have a predicate. So there.