Mistaken: RENT spoilers

We bought & watched RENT this weekend...

I don't like it as much as I thought I did.

I like the music, but the movie version sucked ass. Imagine my anger and frustration upon finding my two favorite songs, "Halloween" and "Goodbye Love" in the DELETED SCENES section. Good thinking, Mr. Director. Nice work. Way to ruin the movie.

The big thing that came clear for me were the innate character flaws and the absurdity of the plotline. I think if one of my buddies from college brought home a transvestite who started singing and dancing and flinging money at me, I might be ready to call the cops. I certainly wouldn't be sitting there calmly, tapping my feet to the beat.

But what really got me was the way Mimi didn't care whether she infected anyone with AIDs. Roger was holding back because he didn't want to get anyone sick, not because he was still hung up on the past. That's why he says "Another Day". But Mimi's all like, "Right now, bitches!" She doesn't seem to take into account all the people she could potentially be infecting (which is illegal, btw) and the lives she could be ruining with her reckless behavior.

And then there's Maureen, the whore to the extreme. What's all this about "this is just the way I am, I'm a flirt, I'm hot, I like attention from anyone and you need to not be so controlling." Excuse me, but wanting a committed, monogamous relationship is not controlling. If Maureen doesn't have the ability to love and commit to just one person, then she ought to be left to her own polyamorous, non-committal devices-- without Joanne or Mark.

What I did enjoy about the movie was the way they exploited the medium to bring more depth to the environments. The musical takes place on a black, bare, minimalistic stage, so the actors/singers have to verbally share everything that's going on. There are no (well, very few) props in RENT proper. But with the movie, they were able to give context to the scenes, and I particularly liked the dream sequence in the "Tango Maureen"-- it was an excellent visual portrayal of the conflict being felt by Mark and Joanne.

I didn't really like the way some of the songs were turned into speech, and I hated the way some of the lines were omitted altogether.

I must say, I like the soundtrack in its original form. I enjoyed the fact that most of the voices/faces were original cast members-- that made it really HOT-- I got to see IDINA MENZEL and TAYE DIGGS, etc, LIVE!!! Fuckin' sweet. I also thought that the actress they had for Mimi this time around sounded less like a crackwhore-- a good choice, IMO.

So I guess I don't like RENT very much. It's unrealistic. It glorifies bad behavior and poor life choices. It vilifies Benny, who seems to have been trying to help his starving artist friends out, and they just took advantage of him and then made fun of him behind his back (or to his face, as the case may be). There's a flaw with the Bohemian lifestyle... someone's getting taken advantage of, and the Bohemians seem to see nothing wrong with that. It's flawed.