"Rent" Meets "Mama Mia"

Rating: 7/10 (13 July 2008)

I give an E for Effort to Julie Taymore, but the problem is she didn't know when to quit. The movie veers from the sublime to the soporific, bogged down by a banal boy-meets-girl story that should have served only as a backdrop to move the musical scenes along, since it's not an interesting or original story in itself. The characters are more generic than "Rent," and the tunes are sewn into a less coherent whole than "Mama Mia," or "Hair," but this movie offers some imaginatively staged musical scenes and special effects which are in a class of their own. The elements of 60's social history are well suited to the music which originated at the same time, but the tone of the film becomes unpleasantly heavy, given that the film doesn't really have a point of view and eventually just dissolves into the gooey love story. Well worth seeing, but don't feel bad if you can't make it all the way to the end.