La Vie Boheme!

I saw the movie Rent twice over the holidays. I absolutely loved it. The movie was a film adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s appraised musical, which won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony award. It is based on Puccini’s La Boheme, which is an opera that was written in the late 1800’s. I can see how the movie could go two ways though. I'd definitely reccomend this to fans of Broadway.

It’s very different from most musicals because it’s a modern day musical and is considered to be a “rock opera”. The music was definitely the movie’s strongest aspect. Because the cast for the film was almost exactly the same cast as the original Broadway cast from 1996 (besides Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thoms), the characters seemed like second nature for the actors. The actors seemed just perfect for the parts, and they all had extremely strong and amazing voices.

The movie tells the story of a group of Bohemians living in the east village in NYC over a year long period of time. NO, everyone in the movie does NOT have AIDS! A few of them do- but the movie is not all about AIDS. It is set in 1989, so many critics argue the material is outdated- especially because it was written and created almost 10 years ago. The movie does have some raunchy/out there characters and ideas, but I didn’t hate it. At all.

The director of the movie is Chris Columbus. I like his name. He directed the first three Harry Potter movies as well as a few other well known films. Many people were anxious about him directing this musical, but I think he did quite alright. The movie remained very theatrical instead of being too Hollywood-ified like some musicals are.

All in all, I’d go check it out! You may like it, you may not like it. A lot of people mock it and poke fun at it but hey, it’s a good movie with a touching story, a great message, and lovely music. The soundtrack is AWESOME!

~ Liz