i don't own emotion, i rent (barf)

saw rent last night with the blands. i was psyched to see it, because most of the cast of the movie is the same cast i saw on broadway many moons ago. honest critique?: i liked it more than not. let the record show - i am a sucker for musicals. pretty much a sucker. i think that overacting is one of the worst offenses out there, but in musicals, it just reads differently with prose in song. so, mild offenses go undetected, and i am still satisfied.

things that bugged me:
*beginning of "rent" song, with rapp riding bike down street. during this point, joey and i both thought uh-oh, worrying the whole thing would be this much cheese (it wasn't)
*some dialogue is directly transcribed from song, so, if you're a dork like me and memorize musicals, then you might be annoyed at first when song-banter becomes plain banter that sort of rhymes (most notable in benny ripping on mark re: maureen at building)
*holy god, the santa fe montage in "what you own (america)" is among one of the worst movie moments i can think of. what is this, a dodge durango commercial? awful. it also reminded me of one of the things i hate about this musical - how much they drive the title home. "rentrentrentre-ntrent!/ we're not gon-na pay rent!/ 'cause ev-ry-thing is rennnnnnnnnnnnnt!"/

everything is rent?
...really?

things i liked:
*rosario dawson and new joanne were good, i thought. note, here: in the play, both women were much curvier, and though i think rosario dawson is super pretty, i liked that about the play.
*i get why they chopped songs and had to remix things. i thought for the most part, it worked.
*i loved "santa fe", the song. this is a good example of giving a song a new movie setting that really works, unlike above.
*jesse martin, if i could marry anyone, would be my first choice in the world right now. joey said something like jesse martin for president! as we walked out of the theater. amen.


on a related note, today is world aids day. man. i've lost someone dear to me from aids, and i'd like to remember them today. in the comedy world, weve gotten to a place where aids is tossed around as an easy punchline. i certainly don't believe in censorship or judgement of anything onstage, so that's not my point at all; just out there, on real time, please remember how serious this epidemic is before you toss it around.