I woke up this morning just in time to catch the cast of the pending film version of Rent perform two numbers on Today. Unintentionally, I should say. A friend had IMed me to let me know they’d be on, I’m sure because I’ve already expressed my certain love for this adaptation and the film’s director Chris Columbus.
Many of you have probably caught the trailer, and I’ll admit, it looks damn good. Of course, it’s just a three minute music video for one of the more rousing songs in the score, “Seasons of Love.” And I am happy to see that the film looks sufficiently “New York.” The actors also look sufficiently in their 30s (with the exception of new-to-the-cast Rosario Dawson), but whatever. It’s nice to know the songs will be sung well by such a talented group.
But I’m still not letting the trailer fool me. I’m pretty sure I wrote a rant some months ago about how untrustworthy trailers are (but I can’t find it and that’s not new news to anyone). In fact, last year, there was a great trailer for The Phantom of the Opera that, like this Rent one was basically just a music video without any real scenes or moments and not one line of dialogue, and we know how that turned out. So the Rent trailer hasn’t done anything to make me believe that Columbus has a shot at making this a good film, even if the comparison isn’t completely fair — just stop all you Rent freaks before you comment how much better the musical you live for is than anything Andrew Lloyd Weber has ever done.
Anyway, this morning the cast was on Today giving two of the more boring performances I think I could ever imagine coming from the show. Thank goodness that Katie Couric was there to play the sycophant after “Seasons of Love.” “You guys sound amazing,” Couric fawned (or something close to that) after the group performed the song standing stock still in front of eight microphones. Uhm, they didn’t sound amazing, actually. There were at least two moments in the song where at least a couple people were really flat and they sounded, for lack of a better word, awkward. Plus, it was just really dull. For one thing, where was a live band to provide the music? The canned backing track sounded very distant. Then to have no movement on the stage just led to something like … zzzzz. You know, much of the success of the stage show comes directly from the audience feeling the strength and energy of the performers — it’s something that is relatively unique to theater and certainly the biggest challenge for Columbus in adapting the show to the screen. “Seasons of Love” is a perfect example of the song that emotionally succeeds if you’re sitting there, feeling the vibrations of the music. On TV, in your living room, not so much. And with vocal mistakes? Blech.
Then they did a second number. But “they” didn’t do a second number — just Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal performed singing “What You Own.” Why have the entire major cast there to do one of the more generic numbers, again with the two performaers barely moving, barely interacting. OK, so maybe other than in the movie, Pascal and Rapp haven’t performed this together so much, but it looked like they barely knew the other one was there. Why not do a number involving the whole cast? Why not sing the title song or “La Vie Boheme.” Plus, the mix with the backing music on this song was even worse.
Really, it was just dull. Hopefully the movie won’t be. I guess we’ll see on Nov. 11. Sorry Chris, I’m still not holding my breath.
Out of Focus 