Rent Critic Reviews

Rent is commodified faux bohemia on a platter, eliciting the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children's beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots, Mahatma Gandhi in Apple ads.Read the full review

Often dramatically jumbled and musically muddled - but every time the film seemed ready to tip into awfulness, the sneer on my lips was trumped by the lump in my throat.Read the full review

I found it tiresomely undramatic, even saccharine. Not to mention monotonous.Read the full review

Director Chris Columbus has pasted the grungy "La Boheme" update onto film with slavish respect for the original material but a shortage of stylistic imagination and raw emotions.Read the full review

Mediocre and recommended only to those who can claim a familiarity with the play.Read the full review

Heart-breakingly awful -- slow, lugubrious, and misconceived to the point of baffling amateurism.Read the full review

One of the best film musicals in years -- exuberant, sexy and life affirming in equal measure.Read the full review

With heavy HIV subtext and a couple of actors who have scored in other films, this La Bohème spinoff about fatal illness, drug addiction and eviction ought to be less of a slog than it is.Read the full review

Yes, Rent is the movie about AIDS, heroin addiction, homosexuality, strippers, marijuana, cross-dressing, and bisexuality audiences can take their grandparents to go see safe in the knowledge that any lingering trace of danger or authenticity has been carefully removed by director/co-writer Chris Columbus.Read the full review