Rent

This movie  of the late Jonathan Larson’s hit musical has been a long time coming. When his Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning AIDS-era update of Puccini’s ‘La Bohème’, set in New York’s East Village, opened in the mid ’90s it was already a slight period piece, and Columbus’s widescreen version – with many of the original cast – seems more so, not least since the Brownstones from which his outsider community face eviction have since fallen to Mayor Giuliani’s bulldozers. It’s high-volume and relentlessly high-octane, with Columbus presenting much of it as if shot on the camcorder of one of the principles, presumably to reflect a sense of ‘edge’. Frankly, the honestly held but self-conscious treatment of a multitude of themes from artistic integrity, through poverty, sexual identity to drug addiction and the ravages of AIDS never runs deep. There are some nicely choreographed large set-pieces and the odd touching scene, but little else to shout about.