Sure, the show's politics were mushy (with "love" repeatedly offered as the solution for AIDS), but it made a strong case for tolerance. Angels in America and The Normal Heart – these were landmark plays about the AIDS epidemic. Rent, meanwhile, was the cri de coeur of young lives cut short, made all the more poignant by the fact that its creator, Larson, died unexpectedly the night of the show's final dress rehearsal.

For those with a low threshold for the musical stylings of Stephen Sondheim or Andrew Lloyd Webber, there was something instantly liberating about the sound of an electric guitar rattling the alabaster fixtures of an old Broadway theater. Unfortunately, the effect isn't quite so revolutionary on screen. Audiences have come to expect loud music with their movies, and as forcefully upbeat as Larson's best material is, it takes on a tame, adult-contemporary feel on film.

The solution would have been to reintroduce Larson's rebel spirit through the direction (the show even supplies the mechanism to do so by setting up Mark as an aspiring filmmaker who chronicles everything on his 16mm camera), but the studio went with director Chris Columbus instead (an ironic twist considering how preoccupied the characters are about not selling out to the Man). Rather than framing events through the lens of Mark's camera, Columbus gives everything the royal Hollywood treatment.

He's respectful where Rent could've used someone risky, sacrificing the scrappy irreverence that's crucial to the show's tone. Galvanized by the "importance" of the material, Columbus is hopelessly literal in translating Larson's work to screen (right down to shooting the opening number on a stage). He's even gone as far as to invite six of the eight original leads back to reprise their roles for the movie (which means the twentysomething starving-artist characters are now old enough that they should just quit their whining and get jobs already).

For fans, the upshot is a fresh new soundtrack that improves upon the hastily produced original Broadway cast recording with robust, full-spirited renditions of all the key songs. Rent is still lively and life-affirming. The downside: There's now a Godzilla-movie disconnect between lip movement and lyrics whenever anyone sings, and Columbus feels woefully conservative in handling such activist material. That's especially clear in the show's weaker second half, which takes the goodwill established in the early scenes and begins to try our patience (as in the eye-rolling sight of Roger strumming his guitar Bon Jovi-style from a deserted New Mexico mountaintop).

Considering how much new additions Rosario Dawson (as Mimi) and Tracie Thoms (as Joanne) bring to the film, it's a shame Columbus didn't introduce more changes. As adaptations go, this one is every bit as slavish to its source material as Columbus' wooden Harry Potter installments, but misses the point entirely. Rent the movie has become a monument not to a generation of young people devastated by AIDS, but to Rent the musical, and as such, it arrives nearly 5,256,000 minutes too late. Larson's ego might have appreciated the gesture, but his spirit has clearly been violated.

[as featured on Premiere.com]