Many years ago, my wife went and saw that crazy AIDS musical called Rent. She loved it and got the soundtrack. She quickly got me to love the soundtrack and took me to see the play. I've seen the musical three times now and she four. We both agree that no matter how good the cast is, they'll never be as good as that original-run cast that was on the soundtrack. Those actors helped shape the show through workshops and really embody those characters.

Now, ten years later, 90% of that original cast has come back to make the movie version of Rent. Of course we had to go see it! We had been following the story of the movie for years, back when Spike Lee was interested in making it, then Martin Scorcese, and then...Christopher Columbus? The guy who directed Stepmom, Harry Potter 1 & 2 and Home Alone? I had to figure CC knew how much this show means to people and he's got the original cast to keep him in line, so he couldn't screw it up too bad. As the teaser commercials came on, we got more and more excited! It looked so good! Then more and more commercials came out with scenes of dialogue! What kind of crap is that? The show is basically an opera, with all the dialogue sung. Each commercial made us more and more sad.

That said, we were very excited to go see the movie, even though the only tickets available in our timee frame were in the theater's "Director's Hall." This means we pay an extra $2.75 for stadium-style assigned seating and ushers. And I guess it keeps the riff-raff out. Which means they'll never play Rocky Horror in a Director's Hall! Ha! Anyway...

A lot of people complained that the cast was too old. I don't disagree, butt I think the trade-off of having the originals was worth it. Most glaring was when Roger tells Mimi, "You look like you're 16" and we all though, "Uh, NO ya don't!"

So the real problem was trying not to nottice every single place where the movie diverged from the play and it was really tough to do. Especially during the songs, because we were already singing them in our heads and then all of a sudden a word chages oir a line is left out or a line is SPOKEN rather than SUNG!

With Harry Potter, Columbus was kind of railed by critics for being too true to the book and not adapting it enough. In Rent, it was almost as if he purposefully put his stamp on it and changed a whole lot of stuff. Honestly, I didn't mind most of the changes, but what really bothered me was that Columbus was SO trying to make this a heavy, emotional movie that he removed all the little sung dialogue bits in between songs and within songs and changed them to straight dialogue. One scene in the play, where Angel rescues Tom Collins, is totally sung:

"You Ok, honey?"
"I'm afraid so."
"They get any money?"
"No. Had none to get. But they purloined my coat."

Columbus apparently decided this kind of stylized dialogue would come off as goofy in the movie, so the scene plays out as a regular old movie scene. We see Angel playing drums and hears a cough. He slowly gets up and carefully trods into the alley to find Tom all beaten up and they engage in realistic dialogue. It just slowed the show down. The musical was BANG a song BANG another song BANG another song. The movie was BANG a song.....a very dramatic scene involving homelessness and drugs...BANG a song...some very heavy dialogue...etc. It felt like a car with bad gas in it, stopping and starting and sputtering with spurts of amazing speed and some flat out stops. The good parts were really good. The story held up well and th music was overall great. Mimi (Rosario Dawson) was one of the new actors and she was not nearly as good as the original. She was, I'm sorry, a bit homely and just not great. Joanne (Tracie Thoms) was kind of different from the original character but very likable.

Overall I would give it a 6.5 out of 10. We didn't hate it nearly as much as we were worried we would. If you liked the play, you'll find plenty to like in the movie and plenty more to talk about afterwards. If you never saw the play and wonder what the fuss is about, I'd say this is not the place to start. The movie just doesn't have the energy of the live performance.