Rent

I’m not entirely sure if Rent has enough focus on WLW characters to be featured on this site. It does have a largely queer cast of characters and a lesbian subplot though. Additionally, people have actually seen and care about Rent. Personally, I don’t care about it. Maybe the stage version is better. But as for the film version, Rent failed to make me feel as strongly as it needed to in order to make this movie a success.

Rent is about a bunch of yuppie, hipster arsty types. They are very upset that there are consequences to illegally squatting in a New York building. Also HIV is a thing. Most of the characters spend the majority of the time making insufferably smug “art” in the genre of their choice or complaining about how they can’t because corporations and stuff. Romantically, the main heterosexual couple struggles with such problems as a dead girlfriend, HIV status and a near-death experience. This last issue is magically solved through the power of (heterosexual) love.

The lesbians in this movie are Idina Menzel who’s a performance artistic free-spirit type and serial philanderer. Tracie Thoms plays her partner, who is sort of her opposite— a more uptight business-type and one of few characters in this movie who has any fucking sense. Their main plot is that they plan to get married but Idina Menzel can’t stop sleeping around. She straight up does a song about how much she likes having sex with other people AT THEIR WEDDING. So obviously they break up. Much as Idina Menzel is a goddess with the voice of an angel, this particular character she plays was definitely not worthy of Tracie Thoms.

My problem with Rent is that the very real problems of poverty, HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and intersections of race are all side-lined to tell a story about obnoxious artists. Those serious and emotional problems act as nothing more than window dressings and are overshadowed by the arrogance of the main characters who are at least the comparatively privileged ones. It’s hard to care about a character selling out and working for the news when a) his indie documentary filmmaking is shit and b) more likeable characters are slowly dying of AIDS.

On that note, the only character who I loved here was Angel. Despite Angel’s name, this is not a character who exemplifies that too pure, queer character who has to die. Angel is definitely the best of them but also objectively kind of a bad person who harms a dog. Angel is the only character who achieves what the movie is trying to achieve with its whole aesthetic and each individual character- a flawed but lovable and creative character down on their luck who I fucking care about. I couldn’t give a shit about the rest of the cast but I cared about Angel. That’s unfortunate given that Angel is the first character to die.

Simply put, Rent just has no personality. Shot by such a bland filmmaker as Chris Columbus, the personality and edge necessary to make Rent work and make it connect with disaffected young people is totally lost. In place is an objectively competent but soulless movie about characters who he could not figure out how to make interesting or even sympathetic.

Overall rating: 4.7/10

Other WLW films in similar genres