EVICTED

I meant to write about this a few weeks ago but in the post-Thanksgiving rush forgot. While I was in Portland over Thanksgiving in between tipping strippers and gawking at hunky Kurt Cobain look-alikes (all of whom, true to cliche, seem to work in coffee shops) I also went to see "Rent." I almost felt like I had a duty to see it, being that I am an aspiring New York Boho-Thespian (albeit one that is far more jaded than the characters that belt their way through adversity in Jonathen Larson's "Rent." I should, apparently, take a cue from the characters in "Rent" and sing my way through the Darwinian struggle of living in New York City but then I'd probably get arrested). First of all, I hate to say it, because I like a lot of the "message" behind "Rent" and some of the music is really, fun, clever, moving etcetera, etcetera. But (ahhh, yes, the invetiable "but") this musical has not aged well and it seems, just ten or fifteen years after its debut at New York Theater Workshop, horribly dated.

The premise of the musical is, essentially, the story of eight artist/bohemian types who struggle to live, love, and create in the East Village during the height of the Aids epidemic. The storyline of Puccinni's "La Boheme" is thrown in there somewhere but "Rent" is not a strict reinterpretation of the opera. Not only do the earnest hipsters of "Rent" struggle with the H.I.V virus, they also face the onslaught of gentrification that is about to make their affordable housing (er, free housing) in the East Village (the EAST VILLAGE!?!) a near impossiblity. Now, I think, watching "Rent" in the era in which the East Village is the playland of junior executives from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, who roll up and down Avenues A,B and C in two hundred dollar "Seven" jeans, drinking $15.00 mojitos, talking on cellphones while their thumbs move swiftly and expertly over Blackberry Keyboard interfaces, is quite differnt than watching "Rent" in the early 90's.

The earnestness of "Rent", the goodwill of these hipsters with a cause, the "love will save the day" message that underlies the musical seems, at this point, slightly cringe inducing because it rings so ---hollow. Also, for better or worse, the disease, AIDS, that really gave the musical it's sense of gravity is, now, something that has come to be thought of as only deadly to...poor African countries. I don't think the musical is helped by the fact that the movie is directed by one of Hollywood's great hired hand/hacks, Chris Columbus. The man responsible for "Mrs. Doubtfire", "Stepmom" and the first two clunky adaptations of "Harry Potter" to name but a few of his Hallmark inspired ouevre.

His camera knows no grace and the scenes never soar or seem...filmic, actually. The fact is film is not theater and the film adpatation of "Rent" could have benefitted from a little nip and tuck (it's far too long, with one ballad too many) as well as some editing panache. It gets neither and the camera remains static and worshipful throughout which kills whatever flair was inherent in the score. Oddly enough, by being too reverential of the original stage production of "Rent" the movie has no life of its own and just seems like a weaker, cornier version of what thrilled so many audiences in the theater. True artists (the kind the character in "Rent" aspire to be) know that sentimentality is the enemy of good art but Chris Columbus seems to only know how to direct in mawkish pastel tones. Even the Drag Queen in the movie version of "Rent" comes off as PG-13.

This "Rent" is nothing that a junior Executive from Goldman Sachs would object to, in fact, after viewing it, it'll just make the East Village all that much cooler, now that, you know, "those" kinds of people are not actual residents there anymore (they all left for Red Hook in '93 cause they couldn't afford the ____). La Vie Boheme, indeed.