Why do I take such gleeful pleasure in this? Here are some of the better zingers in the new crop of “RENT” reviews:

Jim Ridley in the Nashville Scene: “Watching the movie version of Rent in 2005, I know how ex-hippies felt watching Hair in 1978. God knows HIV and poverty aren’t going away anytime soon, but the late Jonathan Larson’s East Village reworking of La Bohème attacks them with the kind of earnest Broadway bombast that dates on arrival – especially when it purports to rock.”

In the New York Observer, Choire Sicha establishes the historical context of the play before turning to the film: “It makes the East Village look a little less authentic than Sesame Street, a little more than It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s illusory, despicable and the worst sort of rewriting of history, because that history has actually never really been written in the first place.”

Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times: “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.”

Stephanie Zacharek in Salon: “I wasn’t sure a movie musical could be worse than last year’s styrofoam-and-gilt swan-boat travesty Phantom of the Opera, but I’m afraid Rent proves me wrong.”

Jorge Morales (Voice): “Rent is about as timely now as Gigi.”

Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: “It doesn’t do what Chicago did, reimagining and stylizing the source material for the big screen.”

Karina Longworth at Cinematical: “By erring, at every turn, on the side of fan-wary caution, [Chris] Columbus has made a film that will probably go over splendidly with devoted ‘Rentheads.’ The problem will lie in not just pleasing, but in fooling, everyone else.”

Nathan Rabin at the AV Club finds it “plays like Last Exit To Brooklyn as reinterpreted by Up With People.”

Dylan Hicks in the City Pages on trying to review the thing: “[I]t feels like shooting fish in a barrel, only the fish are puppies.”

(from http://daily.greencine.com)