plorentz's Full Review: Rent by Original Soundtrack
It's been nearly ten years since my heart first fluttered at the sight of a blurb in the New Yorker regarding a new Off-Broadway rock opera adapting the story from Puccini's La Boheme to post-AIDS New York City. And in that time, I've come to regard Rent, the late Jonathan Larson's magnum opus, with an equal measure of love and disdain. And in fact, much of what I love about Rent is also at the heart of my disdain for it. So naturally, I'm feeling a little conflicted about the impending arrival of the rock musical to a movie theatre near you.
And so it would follow, I'm a little conflicted about that motion picture's recently released soundtrack, which (promisingly - for moviegoers) features most of the show's Original Broadway Cast - Anthony Rapp as nebbishy stuggling documentary filmmaker Mark, Adam Pascal as Mark's HIV+ struggling rock-star roommate Roger, Idina Menzel as Mark's newly lesbianized, struggling performance artist ex-girlfriend Maureen, Jesse L. Martin as Mark and Roger's HIV+ former MIT professor, political activist, butch homosexual ex-roommate Collins, and Tony Award winner Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Collin's newfound love interest, an HIV+ drag queen who supports himself by playing a pickle tub on the street and as a freelance Akita assassin. Also returning is Taye Diggs who plays the gang's friend-turned-evil-yuppie-landlord Benny Coffin III, along with newcomers Rosario Dawson as Roger's HIV+ stripper girlfriend and Tracie Thoms as Maureen's new attorney-bulldyke-girlfriend Joanne.
Not that my ambivalence has prevented me from purchasing that soundtrack, nor will it prevent me from seeing the movie and probably owning the DVD, and probably even watching that DVD from time to time, maybe even playing it once with the director's commentary.
How to explain how I feel about Rent?
Here's a story: A couple years ago, a touring company of Rent came through Madison, and I took my 17-year-old niece to see it. Naturally she loved it, and I did too - it really is a fun show to watch, and though I'd already seen the show a couple years earlier, I thought it was even better the second time around. I ended up burning a copy of my cast album for my niece and from what I heard from my sister and her husband, she played those two CDs (it was the full cast album, thank you very much) into the ground. Sure enough, when James and I went to their house for a party, I could hear "La Vie Boheme" blairing from her room upstairs. One of the show's centerpiece numbers (it's the last song of the first act), "La Vie Boheme" is, musically, a deft fusion of "Cool Jerk" and "Everyday People". Lyrically, it purports to be something of a revolutionary manifesto, but it's really just a laundry list of hipster cultural touchstones (from Sontag and Sondheim to "hand-crafted beers made in local breweries"). It's undeniably catchy, and on stage it feels positively riotous with defiant joy - and in fact, it sounded joyously defiant coming out of my niece's bedroom that day. Until her Dad shouted up at her, "What have I told you? You can't play that CD around your little brother!"
I didn't understand. What was the big deal about it? But then, I remembered those lyrics about "faggots, lezzies, dykes, and cross-dressers too," and found myself not only agreeing with my brother-in-law, but also feeling like one of those bad uncles who shower their nieces and nephews with inappropriate gifts. Ooops. My bad. It's just that, taken in toto, and for all its good-hearted attempts to convey lofty themes about life and death and artistic integrity, Rent is a totally harmless bit of entertainment. Fun for the whole family! Except, of course, for all the drugs and homosexuals.
So here's one of my Big Problems with Rent. It wants so bad to be subversive and revolutionary and dangerous in the same way a musical like Hair was back in the 60s. At the same time, the show's most famous song, a dorky, and eventually annoying-as-all-hell faux-gospel number called "Seasons of Love" (aka "The 525,600 Song") is tailor-made for the Dr. Phil demographic, fairly begging for stiffly-choreographed white-kid show choir performances at high school commencement ceremonies. The movie of Rent is likely to carry an "R" rating when it arrives in theatres, but in my head, it barely warrants a "PG". (In fact, Chris Columbus - the man who brought us the Home Alone franchise - directed this movie, so it might get that "PG-13" after all).
My other Big Problem with Rent might be best illustrated by the fact that, for the longest time, my Dad referred to it as "you know, that new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical - the one with 'Seasons of Love'". Actually Andrew Lloyd Webber had nothing to do with Rent. In fact, a 35-year-old HIV- struggling composer named Jonathan Larson was the sole author of the show's book, lyrics and music. But the hype surrounding the show, its marketing as The Big Musical of the 1990s was certainly reminiscent of Webber's 80s heyday. Adding to that show's myth was its creator's sudden death from an aneurysm in the lead-up to its Broadway transfer.
With it's bountiful cast of young, on-the-fringe dreamers, it fairly begs to be identified with by herds of pimply drama club outcasts (and in fact, the movie soundtrack has been released with eight different "collector" slip-cases, each featuring a member of the principal cast - mine is Mark. Mark's, like, my favorite!). Meanwhile, the musical's best loved songs, focused on new-agey slogans like "NO DAY BUT TODAY" and "I DIE WITHOUT YOU", have an anthemic quality that borders on tyranny. There's something undeniably moving about the way the cast sing those slogans in unison at the end. There's also something undeniably creepy about it, like being surrounded by a crowd that spontaneously rises, hands-on-heart, to sing "America the Beautiful"a propos of nothing. But then, how can I fault a show for appealing so directly to folks my age and younger. I have to admit, I love the fact that my niece loves this show - and the fact is, she's become a real musical theatre buff in the last two years.
And even better, how can I fault a musical so big that it warrants a movie adaptation in these days when movie musicals are so rare (but may be becoming less so).
Which leads me (finally) back to this soundtrack.
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What's immediately apparent about Rent, the Soundtrack, as opposed to Rent, the Original Broadway Cast Album, is just how jarringly produced it sounds. While the cast album had a crunchy rawness to it, most notably on the electrifying title song, here it merely sounds really good. Often what made the original cast album so powerful is, sadly but predictably, diluted here in the quest for a more symphonically grand presence, perfect for dark rooms with THX surround sound.
The next thing that's immediately apparent is how, even on this 2-CD set, much of Larson's original score is missing, from the quirky, sung answering machine messages to those massive "Christmas Bells Are Ringing" passages which found something like 16 singers singing 16 different things all at once for upwards of 15 minutes; or simply rearranged. For instance "Seasons of Love" which opens the play's second act, serves more as a saccharine prolog to to the movie here, not just succinctly introducing the story, but also immediately point out the off-putting contradictions (detailed above) of the score and the show itself. To a certain extent, it's nice to have a lot of these songs without the sketchy bits in between, or the interjected bits of dialogue. The song "Rent" is fairly riddled with such things on the cast album, but here, it's allowed to be what it most wants to be: an out-an-out rock song. Same thing goes for the showdown between Maureen and Joanne on "Take Me Or Leave Me". I could almost hear that song getting radio airplay as it shows up on this disc, were it not for the deviant relationship it betrays.
The vocal performances are generally very good, if familiar, throughout. Particularly wonderful are Anthony Rapp who can convey whiny, conflicted nerdiness without getting annoying, especially on the fabulous "Halloween", or as I call it "The Big Freak-Out Song", where one of Mark's navel-gazing meditations evolves into a gigantic, rocking full-cast Battle Royale - a virtual armageddon of bohemian self-absorption (at a funeral, even!). Jesse L. Martin is also quite wonderful - his resonant baritone has a warm rumbly rasp to it that says "erudite, but sexy." He may over-milk his second act moment with a gospel-inflected reprise of "I'll Cover You", but he gets away with it by sheer power.
Less convincing is Adam Pascal - my least favorite of the original casters (I was actually really bummed to see him back). It's not just the fact that for as counter-culture as his character, the self-described "pretty-boy frontman" Roger, purports to be, he is, nevertheless the lead singer of a band that, by all indications, is a Nickelback knock-off with a serious Bon Jovi jones (Roger's big song is called "One Song Glory"). It's also the fact that Pascal himself feels like a Nickeback knock-off with a serious Bon Jovi jones; and here, his singing is the worst I've heard of him, sounding like a Jack Black parody of himself. (Indeed, Pascal recently appeared alongside Jack Black in School of Rock, playing a total rock n' roll poser.)
Newcomers Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thoms hold their own against the Broadway veterans, but Dawson lacks Daphne Rubin-Vega's Latina spunk and sizzle in the role of Mimi, playing the part a little more breathily - she's barely audible on "Out Tonight".
In addition to the play's original songs, this soundtrack adds a previously unreleased Larson composition called "Love Heals", yet another faux gospel number, clearly produced with Oscar, if not mainstream adult-contemporary radio on its mind. While it's clear that the song didn't really have a place in Rent, it certainly seems appropriate as over-the-closing-credits type stuff; and it's inspirational in the same way that those final American Idol performances with added gospel choir are inspirational - meaning, really, really inspirational as long as you can suspend your disbelief.
Ultimately, this collection is more a souvenir than anything (thus, the collector slip cases), especially for folks who already own the Broadway Cast Album (or it's shortened "Highlights" version). It is, however, a fine representation of all that is good and bad about Rent, and most likely, all that is good and bad about its movie adaptation.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Rent" Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Warner Bros. Records
Released 9/27/05
Produced by Rob Cavallo
95 min.
SONGS: Seasons of Love - Rent - You'll See - One Song Glory - Light My Candle - Today 4 U - Tango: Maureen - Life Support - Out Tonight - Another Day - Will I - Santa Fe - I'll Cover You - Over the Moon - La Vie Boheme - I Should Tell You - La Vie Boheme B - Seasons of Love B - Take Me or Leave Me - Without You - I'll Cover You (reprise) - Halloween - Goodbye Love - What You Own - Finale A - Your Eyes - Finale B - Love Heals
One of the longest-running shows (since 1996) in the history of Broadway, and one of its most beloved, RENT was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for D...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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