Ya, I know I'm very late for the game when I say this, but at the recommendations of friends I watched Rent for the first time. I have many friends who love it, and sing the songs on a basis so regular you could almost make a schedule around it. And I'm going to avoid all jokes and be blunts about it: I hated it. More than that, despised it. As in bottom ten movies ever. As in "I may never take the movie recommendation of one of my closest friends ever again". As in "I have issues so far I need to take a step back and say 'Chill out, dude, it's just a movie.'' And I just need to go on one rant, get all my thoughts out on text, and then I'll be done and can finally get over it and calm the fuck down. And if you are a fan of the musical or movie, I'm sorry if I offend you, and if you can defend it, I'd LOVE to hear it, seeing how no one I know is willing to, citing it as "They don't have to defend their opinion".

Honestly, when I get down to it, the best joke description I have is less "film" and more "feces the likes of which a diarrhea patient would have at the bathroom of taco bell that got capture on a surveillance camera." Quite frankly, I had no positive feelings at all after I first watched it. The best I can give it is I like the first song, despite being rather generic. And I won't give a movie credit for something that happens so early on and if I absolutely needed to hear that song, that's why we have iTunes. And friends with CD's. And illegal downloading cites. And Youtube. And friends who sing it nonstop. 

Now, of the very few actual defenses of the movie I've found include the fact that they deal with AIDS. However, this is less of a "Deal with" and more of a "reference, and then get sad and have a generic pop song", and also, by bringing it up, this is on par with Captain Planet. Do you really want to be on par with Captain Planet? The music is also brought up, and quite frankly, they hit all the notes of a dark musical, and all the songs used are so strikingly generic that an alien to come to Earth now without ever hearing any pop music ever could feel the cliche of it all. 

The characters of this musical were violently one note (I'll send five bucks to whoever can make the best pun out of this sentence). I don't think I'd mind this as much, but a majority of this movie is bad things happening to people, and I really couldn't relate to any of them. For example, Angel's death. I will remember him for being the transvestite... and having AIDS... and money... and... uh... having... well, his name began with "A". This also forced the relationships, so when people broke up and had to release tension, all that it felt like was that they had nothing in common, and were only together because they happened to be the only lesbians in the movie. And I won't even begin to get into how contrived that was, or I'd be here all day.

Like I said, to pick all the nits of the plot (let's just use the phrase "nitpick" in place of "blatant flaws in plots") so I'll stick with one blatant one and one that occured to me after sorting through the blatant ones: The exposition starts with two artists who don't want to give up their visions and pay the rent by getting a job. Because, you know, no song writer or film maker got a job before making it big. I mean, it's not like someone such as James Cameron was a trucker, or every single one of, oh, let's say The Beatles being in working class factory jobs before becoming huge. The other is the sheer number of times the movie could end. And yet, after each ending they keep going on, with more "songs" and more "Drama".

I could go on about all the other things that make me bitter and angry with this "film", so I'll just end it the likes of which they ended the movie. By actually using the phrase "I saw a white light" for describing a near death experience. I need to at least explain the others, no matter how much or how little above, but this one isn't even worth explaining. This is just... I can't even explain why it's not worth explaining.

Well, that's it. Rant over. If you sat through this, thank you, and if you still like the movie, I'd love to hear why, I promise not to get mad in response if I try to tear it apart.  And with this done, I can finally get over a movie and focus my anger on important things, like Television and news media.