Rent

I finally saw the movie "Rent". It was by no means a good movie. The music was fantastic though, almost good enough to offset the blatant homosexuality.

The story is about these guys who all live in this place where they can barely afford rent. They are basically about to get kicked out of their loft, and everyone living there is in this self-righteous mode of thinking that they shouldn't have to pay rent. None of them work of course, which begs the question -- how do you expect to rent in New York when you don't have a job?

Instead, there's this guy who walks around filming random stuff going on. There's a former rock star, who had a one-hit wonder and is now sitting at home moping about. He has AIDS, got it from shooting up. These two guys live together and every Christmas their gay friend comes to visit, who also has AIDS. Eventually he starts going out with this drag queen guy, who also has AIDS. Meanwhile this girl downstairs starts hitting on the rocker, but he tries to avoid her because he has AIDS. In the end he finds out she also has AIDS, and there's a nice little love story there. The film guy's girlfriend dumps him for a girl. Neither of them have AIDS though. The drag queen guy dies.

There, I spoiled the whole thing for you, so you won't have to see it.

The 525,600 minutes song was really good, and I liked most of the others. I liked the "I Should Tell You" song too. Those two seemed to recur over and over in various situations.

One of the things that I was told about this movie was that it had a sad ending, where the she-male dies. It was pretty sad, but I couldn't relate with it. The lover relationship between man and man, I simply could not relate to it. You know when you watch a movie, and say a father loses his daughter, or a woman loses her husband -- those things I can relate to, even if I'm not in this situation, I can at least picture it. But this relationship I simply could not relate to, and thus I couldn't feel sad for this gay black guy who lost his cross-dressing he-she dragqueen. Because it's not natural, and because sodomy is a sin.

To me, it was sad because we know that hundreds of people in Africa are dying of AIDS every second of every day. That's what makes it sad. That the gay guy has lost his lover -- well, it just means that soon he'll be join him/her at the gates of hell. It's not a big loss. I'm sorry, I know it's still a human being, but I just cannot relate to it.

The play embraces homosexuality, and ultimately, hopelessness. It says: Hey! I'm gay and proud of it! Why get a job? I have AIDS and I'm going to die! Woohoo!

I can't rate the movie because it's based on a play, and I haven't seen the play. But from what I've been told, it's pretty close to the play. And after all is said and done, it's just meant for entertainment.

This movie was very much like The Producers, except with much better music and no annoying screeching voices like that guy in The Producers. I give it a 5/5 for the music and -1/5 for the story, so a total of 4/10.

Buy the soundtrack! (Mind you some of the songs have lyrics that well, let's just say if Jesus is listening, you better mute it)