My senior year in high school I bought the soundtrack to Rent, the smash Broadway musical. It was a 'box set' of 2 long-play cassettes which got a lot of airtime in my car. I've never been a really big fan of musicals, but this one was and is different in that the music is alive and soulful and completely addictive. (Compared to that terrible organ refrain that's played a quadrillion times in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, which is unforgettable in a bad way.) Ok, ok. There are other exceptions, as well. For instance, I like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and The Jungle Book. Maybe it's just Broadway musicals that lead me to believe all the musicians and actors with no real talent go into musical theater......

Back to Rent.

I listened to the soundtrack over and over and over again, and had many of the song lyrics committed to memory so that I might become a choir member while listening to my cassettes. Because I enjoyed the music so much, I assumed I would enjoy the theater and movie versions.

I was wrong, kind of.

I haven't yet watched the stage version, and I probably won't. It costs too much and I'm cheap. However, I did watch the newly released DVD of the film a few days ago, and was thrilled to hear those songs all over again! I hadn't listened to them in years! (Except, I must confess, the Tango Maureen, which I have the mp3 for on my computer and on a burned mix CD in my truck.)

The plot and storyline are time-proven. The conflict between socio-economic classes has always been an easy theme to draw from. Poor vs Wealthy; Sick vs Healthy; Artists vs Reality. Add a little song and dance routine to a sick, starving artist and voila! You have Rent!

The actors, very comfortable in the roles they first inhabited over a decade ago, were also on top of their game. With only exception, Jesse L. Martin, who plays Tom Collins. Now, this is hard for me to say because I am a pretty big fan of Mr. Martin, since he stars in one of my favorite television shows, Law and Order, but maybe he's been in television drama too long and didn't quite transition back to theater well. I can't really pinpoint it, but he just seemed...... mediocre. I think it was the canned facial expressions that are so common in theater and slapstick comedy, like he was still in high school drama class or something.

But the message, ah! It's not just all entertainment, no. There are a couple of messages which entwine their way through the Rent story, sometimes contradicting our notions or ideas about the film. The first one deals with how underpriveledged (poor!) people cope with their uneasy lives. In Rent, we're first presented with the idea that the artsy folk are the poor ones and the rich people are against them because they want to take their homes and construct a technology center. That's the standard rich vs poor story we're used to. We think the rich guys are the bad guys, because the story makes us like the poor people. But while maintaining our good opinions of the poor people, Larson shows us that these particular poor people have chosen to be that way in the pursuit of their artistic ambitions. Then he shows us that there are different kinds of poor, and even when we think we have it bad, there's always that bag lady on the street who has no home at all, no place at all, and at least we are better than her. Her view of the artsy people was no better than the artsy people's view of the corporate people.

And, of course, as Larson wrote this in the 90's, AIDS was celebrating a decade of unchecked killing. Only the drug AZT was helping AIDS victims, and then not very well. The characters in the movie that do have AIDS carry small beepers to remind them to take the medicine every four hours, even at night. "AZT break!" Watching the Angel death montage was difficult, as I have seen people waste away exactly the same way.

But I have mixed feelings about the message Rent gives about living with AIDS. Sure, you shouldn't sit around and hate yourself because you have the virus. You can't do that with any disease. I understand that it was especially hard with AIDS because so little effective treatment was available at the time, but I think there does, in fact, have to be some change in your life when you aquire HIV. You can't live your life exactly the same. If you caught the disease from sexual contact or sharing needles, then continuing those behaviors would only put others at risk, as well. But the late 80's and 90's was a time when some AIDS activist were being a bit... strange. Proposing crazy ideas about the virus itself and the treatments and being hysterical in general. So that attitude seems to have some foothold in the Rent characters.

Of course, that in-your-face attitude also comes from their desperate defense of their bohemian lifestyle.

One of my favorite lines: "Bohemia! Bohemia! It's a fallacy in your head!" (My very favorite line, "You should try it, in heels!")

Here is the problem I have with New York urbanite Bohemians: they want to live a life of art and think everyone should join them.

"What's so bad about that?", you say. Well, on it's face, nothing is bad about it. However, practically, it's impossible. There are six billion people in the world. If everyone followed their practice, nobody would be eating because nobody would want to plow the fields and butcher the cows. (Stupid vegans, of course I wanna eat beef!) A better solution would be to convince a wealthy person, or the government, to become patrons of your particular endeavors.

These people don't even want to pay rent, for God's sake!

Don't get me wrong, I wish the world was different, too. I wish there were no corporations. None. I dislike the corporate environment of our society today to no end. But having everyone sit around writing poetry isn't gonna solve that.

I always seem to point out things that I don't like! But Rent is still entertaining and fun to listen to, so it is very deserving of 4.5 out of 5 Giant Roosters!