Never Seen It #326: RENT

Find the one blog before the virus takes hold, glory, like a sunset. One blog to redeem this empty life! Time flies, you watch 500 movies you've never seen before, and then no need to endure anymore! Time dies.

RENT

2005

Chris Columbus

Welcome to our next installment of the "Already Seen It" subseries, where we asked members of Film Club to choose a movie they've already seen from the list, and force Joe to watch it. I was hoping no one felt obligated to rewatch any movies that they picked, but some of our loyal club members beat me to the punch and rewatched it anyway. Zach rewatched RENT, and has some thoughts. Then I'll share my thoughts afterward.

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Zach

This is the third time in my life I've seen RENT. The first was Thanksgiving Day 2005, in the theaters, with my mother's side of the family, who are all way more into musicals than I will ever be. I was deep in the mourning period for my high school girlfriend, even though we had broken up nearly a year before. Coming back to Maryland always made things feel worse, and I (while I don't remember specifically) assume I saw her at some point during that trip. Something about the emotion of the movie got me then. It probably had to do with the emotion of the music, and with all the breakups that happen in the movie, even though everyone seems to get back together at the end. The second time was when it showed at the cheap NYU movie nights in the theater. My main memory from watching it then was an audible laugh at the crowd during the scene where Roger walks out onto the rocks in Santa Fe. I think people laughed because it looked so stupid and contrived. It still does, although watching it now, for the third time, I didn't think it was the most embarrassing shot I've ever seen in a movie.

But let's be honest. To watch RENT today feels a bit eye-rolling. The absolute sincerity of the songs, the lack of irony, the cringeworthiness of "La Vie Bohème"—it doesn't really fit today. Portlandia made fun of that world, and now a show like Portlandia would never make it on air because the world is too dark, and making fun of free-range chicken feels irrelevant. So RENT is certainly dated. 

But the music. Oh, the music. "Seasons of Love" will always get me. "Will I" will always get me. So will "What You Own." Yes, I can laugh at the absurdity of the characters. Mark's movie kind of sucks, Roger is a very clichéd character, Mimi is a manic pixie dream girl, Benny represents THE MAN and the show makes sure you know that, Maureen and Joanne are archetypes... I honestly think the best characters in the show are Collins and Angel. 

Somehow I got lucky enough to like the music of RENT before I realized its cheesiness. I don't like musicals in general, but this one slipped by me, and I'm better for it. I found myself belting out "Seasons of Love" at the beginning along with the rest of the cast.

The show hearkens back to a different New York, too. Nowadays, Alphabet City is a fancy place, like most of Manhattan. It's all high-rises, and modern buildings, too. HIV is much more under control than it used to be. The idea of "selling out" is more of a joke than it used to be. It was a different time, it was a different place, and it's not culturally relevant anymore. But the songs are one banger after another, and that makes it all worth it.

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Joe

I have no ties to any of this, which is what makes it difficult to have an opinion about this movie musical, and which also probably makes me more willing to accept it for what it is, as opposed to what it does to a thing or a place in time that people genuinely care about. What I mean is that I don't really give a shit about Broadway musicals, Gen X angst, the so-called bohemian lifestyle, the legacy of RENT the musical, New York City, or any dork who cut their teeth in New York in 1989, 1996, 2005, 2011, or 2026. So all that can be brushed aside. I care about the movie in front of me and I care about the music it contains. That's basically it.

A quick aside I might add here would be the fact that I have, of course, been familiar with the idea of RENT as a movie, having cut my own teeth right here in Philadelphia in a low-rate but lovable theater program at my local low-rate unlovable university, with all those theater rapscallions singing along to soundtracks of shows that I'll never seen in person, and also of course being familiar with it as a cultural institution, what with the Team America gag "Everyone Has AIDS" cutting RENT down a year before the film version's release, plus, I don't know, it's status as the perfect and also cringeworthy encapsulation of an entire generation's grappling with growing up in their specific place and time. I've also seen bits and pieces of the film over the years, probably some minutes here and there in the background as I slugged Natty Lights at an upperclassman's townhouse, and definitely during a particularly wayward moment in my high school years, when I made an icky, horny decision and hurt some feelings and feel the shame even now rippling through the two decades since, RENT the movie soundtracking that moment of my life, burned into my brain as the background to a low point. This is coincidence, and not important, but perhaps worth noting, simply because it's that kind of movie.

Any issues that you might have with this movie as an adaptation of a theater show you love is not really my problem. I don't give a shit. To me, it's a movie, and it's fine. That "fine" is circumstantial, though, and I'm trying to tell you now that it's a good thing that it went this way. If I don't give a shit about the musical then I'm not gonna sit here and tell you the movie is inferior. I literally can't, I have nothing to compare it to. There are people who hate this film because it's not like the original version. I'm saying that this movie is fine, don't worry about it.

They ("they" being: basically everything I've read online; Zach, above) say that it's outdated, and perhaps that's true. There are people who needed this musical in their lives during their formative years, when they were young and life was full of fake hardship papering over real privilege and wild fun, and then they see the movie adaptation later in life, see the original cast who are now way too old to play these characters, see what they themselves were actually like in their early 20s, and cringe, and think that there is no way that this film and this idea of RENT could possibly be relevant anymore. They are, as far as I can tell, completely correct. It's outdated because they are older now and this is no longer relevant. But here, too, I can say: I don't care. I am viewing it only as a time capsule, and nothing else. I didn't grow with it and therefore I cannot outgrow it. It's already of the past, and can never be my present.

For what it's worth, though, Pam—having seen the musical, having already seen RENT the movie a few times, and having already played the soundtrack in our car at least a dozen times since I've known her, and that's just counting when I myself am present—said that she liked the movie better than she remembered. My theory is that she went through that typical theater kid process of knowing / liking / obsessing over the musical, and then being disappointed with the Chris Colombus adaptation, due to aforementioned ideas of its "outdatedness" being personal much more so than cultural. But what Pam represents, here in 2026, in her early 40s, is the idea of making it all the way through and coming out the other side. She's far enough removed from "needing" or at the very least "relating to" RENT as a young teen or 20-something that she can comfortably see it as a time capsule now too.

That's growth. Now here's my growth: I liked the songs a little better this time around. I just said in the last paragraph that Pam has forced this soundtrack upon my ears more than a few times over the years. Not to the point that I was familiar with them all by the time I watched the movie (not like Hamilton, whose soundtrack was worn out by the time my ass hit the theater's cushioned seats), but enough that I had formed a general opinion of them. That opinion was: "Oof... rough..." I have always thought and still think now that the lyrics are some of the worst lyrics I've ever heard in any musical. Just some of the lamest, cringiest shit that's ever been put on stage.

HOWEVER, I say this as someone who just generally needs a lot to be impressed, NOT as someone who is any sort of Broadway skeptic. I will gladly cop to the idea that I am easily impressed when it comes to the combination of singing and dancing and "performing" on stage or screen. I am, in other words, highly susceptible to the magic of theater. The best example here is "La Vie Bohème," a song that I grew to utterly despise in my occasional dalliances with it in the family minivan. Its corniness made me want to tear my fucking hair out. But seeing the whole gang dance around to it, my Dazed and Confused boy Anthony Rapp go nuts dancing on tabletops and shit... ya know what? I finally understood the song. I don't think it's great, but I understood what they were doing, for the first time. It felt like a worthy part of this artistic statement, and I'm thankful to see it performed as intended.

Not that I'm going to be excited to hear it in the car next time around (I mean, we just watched the damn movie together, there's no fucking way we're gonna get past the next car ride together without hearing this shit again, right?), but I have a peace of mind knowing that I was simply missing essential pieces of the experience. Elsewhere on the soundtrack, there is another song that stood out in the movie, but for a different reason. Namely, because it's a great fucking song, straight-up, no contextualization needed. "Out Tonight" as performed by Mimi as performed here by Rosario Dawson. You don't even need the context of Dawson being one of the hottest people alive and playacting as a stripper here—homie don't play that shit when it comes to being a music critic. Taking my horny hat off and putting my music critic hat on firmly, I say wholeheartedly that "Out Tonight" is the best song from a music I've heard since Larson's "30/90."

The rest of the music is fine. The rest of the movie is fine. A lot of it is silly even though it's not supposed to be (lol at Zach mentioning the Sante Fe part, I literally turned to Pam and said "I was so fucking confused, I forgot he was in Sante Fe"), and a lot of the intended silly parts are not very silly at all (Idina Menzel's little one-woman show was so embarrassing it made me want to set myself on fire and jump off the fire escape like so many burning eviction notices). But we can stick to what we know, and only what we care about here in 2026. RENT is purely nostalgia now, and since I missed that whole thing at the beginning, I can comfortably say that this movie is fine, and all the glaring issues were simply chalked up to this being a goofy and charming movie, that meant something to some people some time ago. But not me. That's okay.

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: We have another round of small group work, and half the crew is gonna be watching Princess Mononoke.