Rent Review

It's funny for me to be so in love with the broadway music of Rent since I never actually saw the play.  Instead, my sister saw it and got the CDs which I copied and just loved every song.

I actually started watching it near the end and then recorded it the next time it was on so I could watch it all the way through.  The first thing I noticed right off the bat was that the songs did not all sound the same.  The song where Maureen and Joanne fight sounds excellent on the CDs as if they are both really angry, yet in the movie, it seemed more like a joke.  Even though it is the same Maureen from the play, she didn't seem to hit the notes the same.

The next LAME thing I noticed was a scene where Benny had his change of heart.  On the CDs this is a GREAT song, one of my favorites, but in the movie they took the song lyrics and made it into regular talking with some other things thrown in.  LAME!!   I mean if they weren't going to sing it, they didn't have to say it word for word, they could have changed it around to sound more like someone who was talking instead of sounding like lyrics that weren't being sung.  Do you know many people who talk in Rhymes?  Cause I don't. 

Once I gave it a chance and watched it from the beginning, I was still disappointed, because the very first song of the musical was shortened and turned into spoken words and the next two were completely missing.  For those of you who don't know, the musical is almost 100% musical.  If you buy the CDs you can hear the whole story from start to end with only a few spoken words missing which are shown in the cd pamphlet but not really direly important to the play.  Most people who would plan to watch this love the rock music and would want to hear it, not to hear plain old talking.

Some of the songs are still good but those are mostly the ones starring Adam Pascal (one of my absolute fav singers) and Anthony Rapp because both these men give it their all.  I noticed that their songs always sounded almost exactly like the CD which is wonderful because they have awesome voices.  Who knows, maybe they just played the CD at their parts, but who cares, it sounded good! 

On the positive side, it was nice to be able to see some of the cast members in their original roles and imagine what they would have been like on stage.  However, I'd rather listen to the CDs than ever see watch this again!  It's just disappointing.  I would have rather they set a camera up on the stage and taped the actual play as is.  I feel like anyone who has seen the play won't like the changes, and anyone who hasn't seen the play might like it, but they aren't getting the full grand effect of the music and the story.  Watch with caution, or just to see the original cast and hear some good performances.