The writer who adapted the screenplay for Rent had some serious brass ones, I've got to say. I can just imagine the producer coming up to good ol' Stephen Chbosky saying "Hey, Stephen. I've got a job that only you can handle. I need you to take the most irritating, unlikable characters imaginable and make them the protagonists of a musical. Got it? Good."
Seriously, what were they thinking when they made this into a movie? The whole plot revolves around a bunch of bohemian hipsters demanding free rent in New York City from their friend. We start the movie establishing that this big, bad corporate lackey is kicking our friendly cast of hobos out on the street after they haven't paid rent in over a year! A YEAR! What a jerk, right? Not at all like my nice landlord who would have me out on my ass if I missed a month's rent but hey, I'm not in New York, the land of generosity.
There have been weirder plots though, that have succeeded based on their characters. Well, let's just take a look at these guys, shall we? Our main guy is Roger, a "musician" with HIV who just wants to write one last song before he dies. I say musician in quotes because the movie takes place over a year. (yet another one where they don't pay rent at all. So landlord is up to two years with only one half-hearted attempt to kick them out) This guy has an entire year to write one damn song and comes up with nothing. That's right. The movie ends without him ever having one more song. So, then, WHAT THE HELL WAS HE DOING???
Roger falls in love with Mimi, a perfect love interest for our boring, lazy main character if I ever saw one. She's a stripper junkie who also happens to have HIV and arbitrarily breaks into our main character's apartment so that she can have him light her candle and she can continue shooting up heroin. Roger spurns her advances and we are made to feel he's the jerk in this relationship. Apparently, in the world of Rent, having hardcore drug addicts as potential life partners is a good thing and not support group-worthy.
Mark is Roger's roommate. He's a filmmaker although that should probably also have quotation marks around it but I'll let him slide since at one point in the film, he does actually get a job and film stuff. His whole deal is he wants to make a documentary about life with his bunch of AIDS-ridden hobos. He's relatively down to Earth and practical about things, understanding that he just can't live for free forever like everyone else seems to be doing. He gets a job working for a TV show at one point but this is shown to be evil and selling out. By the end, Mark gets disgusted at his sell out lifestyle of working for a living and quits so that he can continue making his shitty documentary which, as we see by the end of the movie, is just a jumbled mess of smiling pictures with no sound. Congratulations, Mark! You made the worst film every created! Good job!
Next we've got Maureen. Wikipedia calls her a protest artist but I couldn't tell the entire time I watched the movie. An early plotline is she's putting on a one-woman show to protest a building being torn down. Let me talk a bit about this show for a second. I majored in English in college so I'm no stranger to interpreting metaphors and symbolism. Hell, I spent four and a half years of my life doing it constantly. Still, watching her one-woman show, I had no idea what the fuck she was doing or talking about. Nothing seemed to have anything to do with anything as she sings a song about a cow jumping over the moon. I don't know... Somehow, this God awful show stops them from tearing down the building but then she never does anything again for the rest of the movie. Some protest artist. I know plenty of people who protest more than this but don't call it their job.
The other characters aren't bad for anything other than going along with all of this nonsense but in some ways, that makes it even worse. They aren't bat-shit crazy which gives us some perspective in the ridiculous lifestyle the rest of these characters are living. We've got Angel and Collins who both are clearly bohemian too but they at least do things. Angel is a street performer with mad drumming skills and Collins is a professor (the play says an anarchist professor, but still) so they do things. The rest of these characters accomplish nothing over the course of their year. Eventually, Mimi and Roger get together to have their surely abusive relationship. Mark shows his friends his awful film which they all smile about, no doubt wondering how someone wasted their life so completely. Maureen and her lover, Joanne, reconcile after fighting about an already abusive relationship involving cheating and mental abuse. Finally, Collins has managed to move past Angel's death by hacking ATM's to give hobos free money. A real feel-good ending, right?
