Well at least I heard that before I saw the movie. Grrr.
The Hollywood Reporter called it “one of the best film musicals in years” while MSNBC called it a disaster one notch above the horrendous film adaptation of “A Chorus Line”.
Hmm…
“It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping!”
Maybe Columbus has finally managed to make an interesting bad movie.
Speaking of which, is it better or worse then the movie version of Phantom? (Loved the play, though the movie was good to decent).
Not that I’ve seen the play or the film of Rent(and nobody will let me borrow the soundtrack, despite how great people tell me it is).
I liked it, but I’d never seen the play.
Angel in drag looked a <i>lot</i> like my last girlfriend, which was more than a little disturbing.
Saw it tonight. I had never seen the play, but I enjoyed the film. My mother, who had seen the play, said the film was better and easier to understand than the film.
I saw it tonight, having low expectations due to negative reviews. My negative expectations were quite surpassed- there was a LOT I liked about it. The only thing I really disliked about it was the cut singing (particulary Christmas Bells, Sex and not mentioning that Benny paid for Angel’s funeral [and knew Angel killed his Akita {Evita}]).
It cut much of the humor from the play (including Benny’s response when Mark and Collins condescendingly tell him “Must be nice to have money”- “No shit!”). And I totally agree with the "Joanne’s engagement party- WTF! What happened to “For Mommy’s sake kitten, No Doc Martens this time” parentage!)
But I love:
-the filming on location in NYC (at least it looks like NYC)
-Adam Pascal’s smile (he comes across as a smirking conceited ass in interviews, but boy is cute- so’s Anthony Rapp for that matter [who just comes across as really really gay])
-the subway dancing
-Tango Maureen- perfectly realized with ONE exception, that being that it introduced Maureen before her big entrance (which was one of my favorite parts of the stage show)
-La Vie Boheme
-Angel’s death scene
I’d say it’s way better a filming than PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (though in fairness I’ll admit I’m not a big fan of Phantom) and I totally intend to own it on DVD.
That sounds like something my mother would have said, but we always blamed it on the fact that her family was Norwegian.
Meh. A so-so adaptation of an over-rated musical.
Never saw the play. Love the atage, love musicals, somehow never managed to see this in a theatre. Very excited about the movie. Hated it.
There were individual moments I liked - the fires during the ‘Rent’ song, for example - but overall, I was strongly considering leaving halfway through, and kept telling myself it had to get better. The saddest part is, the themes couldn’t have been better programmed to appeal to me, but the work as a whole was remarkably flat and unengaging.
I think, technically, the dog belonged to Muffy (Allison).
I’ve never seen the play, although I wanted to see it when it toured to UF.
I saw the movie on opening night. I really enjoyed it. Since I hadn’t seen the play, I didn’t know which songs they had cut, or what changes they had made to the timeline. These two seem to be the biggest complaints. Not about the acting, or the songs that are there, but about how it is not like the musical (which I didn’t expect it to be, at least not completely). By the way, what I’ve read the people complain of the songs not being there, but fail to explain the importance or what happened in those songs that was missing in the movie. I would like to be spoiled in that regard, please.
I thought they showed enough of how Angel was dying… when they were showing the life support meetings, you could see his semblance looking paler and sicker, then the subway ride, and then all the scenes of him in the hospital, and how all the friends got together to help.
I agree with the Benny character, though. I sort of inferred that he made up with his friends, and that he must have dumped his wife (or been dumped) when I saw him with Mimi. Would have been nice to have a line or two explaining that.
April’s storyline is similar, but again, in her case I inferred not suicide, but that she had died of AIDS (since she had it before him) while Roger was still alive and kicking. Completely plausible…
Overall, I enjoyed the movie, and I enjoyed the songs. I saw it with a couple of people that had also seen the play, and they liked the movie (and still cried).
Yea, throughout the movie I kept thinking of Anthony Rapp as “hey, now he can go after a guy and be happy”, but that didn’t happen.
I also loved the subway dancing, and to the person who didn’t like it… hey, I saw it as a musical, it’s required to have random dance or moves around the songs. 
I have the feeling I’ve heard La Vie Boheme before, but I cannot remember where… Same with the Seasons of Love song…
Didn’t notice that mistake. I meant to say that my mother thought the film was better and easier to understand than the play.
Did a møøse ever bite yøur mother? I know it’s common in Sweden, but Nørway’s not that far away.
Mimi was strictly an extramarital fling, he stays with Muffy/Allison. In the play, the reason that he ultimately agrees to let the squatters stay is not because Mark pays him rent (which in the play he doesn’t- perhaps this was to make them look less like deadbeats) but because his wife gives him an ultimatum of leave the building/lot/Mimi or get divorced (and she’s the reason he’s driving a Range Rover).
I think Jesse L. Martin and Wilson Hedeira are the two most deserving of Oscar nods, and it’s not just because of the same old same old “straight guys playing gay” but because they’re just that good. Some trivia: Collins was originally supposed to be a white computer geek and his affair with Angel very much an “odd couple” (white professor/black street kid, conservative attire/drag queen, etc.) but Martin (who was originally auditioned for Roger) just so wowed Larson and had such chemistry with Angel that the role was rewritten to be a hip black anarchist while Roger’s role was rewritten as white “pretty boy front man”.
Personally I’d have set it in the mid 1990s, incidentally, after the Rodney King riots (which clearly inspired the videotaped police brutality/riot in the play/movie), though AZT may not have been the “miracle drug” that it seems in the play (and of course never was). And there’s a time problem now with Angel’s lyrics “It was my lucky day today on Avenue A” story since they kept the “back on the street where I met my sweet” when in fact it all happened the day before.
On a personal note, I’m “thwarted by a metaphysic puzzle”, that being that I’m a gay man (pretty much a perfect 6.0 on the Kinsey Scale), yet I found Maureen and Joanne’s scenes together hot. Hmm. Joanne may even go on my list of the women I could possibly beget an heir with naturally if ever necessary for the security of the realm. I actually find her hotter than Rosario Dawson, who is already on the list (more for the obvious intelligence than the body).
Incidentally, I thought Idina Mendel and Adam Pascal were the two who most showed their age in the piece. And I was surprised at Idina, who’s the biggest star of them all on Broadway thanks to Wicked, mooned the camera (with her husband standing right there no less).
They SHOULD have gotten Trey Parker and Matt Stone to direct.
“Everyone has AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS…”:
Everybody sing…!
It just occurred to me…
… there won’t be any opportunity to Moo with Maureen… 
I liked “Lease” a lot better. 
Sampiro, thanks for the clarification… eh… wait… he never left Mimi, so how come he’s not divorced?
Bricker, why do you say that?
Because in a movie theater, if I moo, people are going to get upset.
True story: I saw Rent on Broadway six times before I saw it on its opening night in Boston. I moo’ed enthusiastically and loudly that night… only to quiet down because no one else was mooing. I didn’t mind being a spectacle; I did mind “ruining” someone else’s theatre experience, and the people around me thought I was nuts. I guess the “actual reality” of mooing being acceptable took a while to catch on in for cities on the tour.
So if that was the reaction in a live theatre venue… no way in hell will there be mooing at the movie.
In fact, let’s test the theory: those of you that have already seen the flick - mooing, or no?