rent

diana has been obsessed with this one lately. shes had it saved on her tivo for a while (with movies she keeps then on there even after she watches it). about a month ago i surprised her with the soundtrack, which she loved. i reluctantly listened to it while we were on a drive a couple weeks ago, and it turns out its not that bad. she would try and explain the story as we would listen to each song so that it would make sense. it sounded mildly interesting, so i told her i wouldnt mind watching it some time. dang, i should have known that she would take me up on that... oops!
most of the original broadway cast is in this movie, which is great in that we get to see the story with its original vision, but also a bit strange because these actors are 10 to 15 years too old for their parts. instead of it being college age kids trying to live out their dreams, we see 35 to 40 year olds desperately clinging on to a past life and they should know better. the music is definitely the best part of the film, but im not crazy about musicals, so even that took a bit to get past. these being broadway actors, they have a very distinctive singing style, and it really annoys me. they over pronounciate everything. granted, its good to understand what they are singing, but they take it a bit too far with their exacting word use. at times the story was quite engaging, and when a character dies, it is actually very moving. there are a ton of main characters to follow, which isnt too hard, but it does lead to another big problem with the movie- id didnt quite know when to stop. the pacing is a bit off, and it feels like the movie ends at three different points, yet it keeps going. this could have been done a bit better. by the final ending i didnt really care because i would have turned it off after the first ending.