Rent Control

Rosario Dawson joins the rest of the original Broadway cast in Rent, a passionate, highly energetic musical about life in the East Village of New York City during the height of the AIDS scare of the late 1980's/early 1990's.

Though I grew up listening to various Broadway musicals (thanks to the Bease, who's always been a fan of musical theater), I had never heard or seen Rent. Since I didn't quite know what to expect, I just went in to the movie with an open mind, and that's exactly the kind of mindset a viewer must have when approaching the musical. If you have rigid ideas about how to love and how to live life, then this movie will certainly challenge your ideas. As self-proclaimed Bohemians, the characters embrace and celebrate all walks of life; that's not to say that the movie glamorizes drug use, homosexuality, and exotic dancing, because it certainly shows the painful consequences that the characters must face due to their choices, but at the same time, the movie never judges these characters, and for that reason, the musical remains lighthearted and hopeful even in the darker moments of life.

The plot is fairly pointless to this musical (the plot? all these Bohemians are going to be evicted from their lofts because they haven't paid rent in months - oh no, where are they going to go?). What matters in this movie is not the thin plot, but the themes of love and embracing life despite the hard times. What the musical seems to be screaming at some points is: LIFE IS SHORT! LOVE EVERYONE YOU CAN! And though the "carpe diem" theme is common in many movies, it's nice to be reminded every now and then that happiness can be free if you're willing to let go of your own fear and love people who are different from you.

Breakthrough performances include Jesse L. Martin as Tom Collins, a part-time professor suffering from AIDS who has fallen in love with a drag queen named Angel (played with exuberance by Wilson Jermaine Heredia). Tom's love for Angel centers and stablilizes the other characters in their own quests for love. The character of Tom Collins could have been portrayed as angry or cynical about his own life (after all, he has AIDS, he gets kicked out of a teaching job at MIT presumably because of his disease, he gets mugged in the opening shots of the film, and his soul mate only has a few months to live). But instead, Martin gives the character a lot of joy and internal peace.

My other favorite performance in the movie is from Anthony Rapp, who plays Mark Cohen, a heterosexual film maker on the verge of selling out in order to make enough money to eat and pay rent. Rapp has had a fairly successful career in film (including roles in A Beautiful Mind, Adventures in Babysitting, Six Degrees of Separation, Dazed and Confused, and School Ties), but it's evident in this performance that musical theater is where he belongs. Not only is he an amazing singer and incredible actor, but he's also a great dancer and he throws himself completely into the role. Actually that can be said about all of the actors in the film - this musical calls for big performances and though some of the lyrics and lines are completely cheesy, the actors never seem embarrassed to be singing and dancing about AIDS.

Overall, I think the movie had great performances and a lot of energy, but at two hours and fifteen minutes, it's way too long - I think if 30 minutes had been cut, the movie would have been a lot more enjoyable. Perhaps Chris Columbus, the director, felt obligated to include every song from the original stage production, but I really think that the Maureen/ Joanne lesbian subplot is probably the most expendable and pointless, particularly the engagement dinner and Maureen's self-indulgent, painfully long stage performance in protest of being evicted (images of Susan Sarandon's tap dance routine in Elizabethtown came to mind).

Grade: B