In his remake of “To Be, or Not To Be”, Mel Brooks made the observation, “If you take Jews, Fags, and Gypsies out of show business, what’s left?” To be sure, what Universal Studios’ horror flick would be complete without the gypsy fortuneteller? And, well, with the likes of Jackie Mason, Fran Drescher and Brooks himself, our people have been pretty out there, even mainstream. We’re accepted as a vital part of the American fabric, and the driving force behind entertainment, banking, and Chinese restaurants. This was accomplished by making the Jewish stereotype endearing and amusing, and once we’d gotten a toehold, the rest of America embraced us.

For whatever the reason, this doesn’t seem to be working for the gay community, as exemplified in the movie version of “Rent”, based on the hit Broadway musical. I never saw the stage version, mainly because I couldn’t get a handle on the plot. So, with nothing better to do, I made the arduous ninety-minute drive into Las Vegas to see it.

If the movie musical is having trouble making a comeback, ‘Rent’ is one of the reasons why. The plot is a patchwork of subplots, which get in each other’s way, and make the whole very confusing. Too many social issues are addressed at once, leaving the audience fardrey as hell. But as near as I could figure out, the story deals with a cyber café going up near the local gay ghetto. The ‘renters’, a curious meshugas of crack-addicts, gays, and ethnics, all either flying on meth or riddled with Aids, are against the café because it’s being spearheaded by one of their own who ‘sold out’ by marrying money. The music is reminiscent of “Hair” and “Godspell”, with uneven beats and excessively complicated lyrics, most of which make little or no sense, as if the songs had been put in simply to justify the genre it lays claim to. Overall, the film is uneven, alternately speeding along at a breakneck pace and then slowing to a crawl.

The only characters in the movie that you really care about are the HIV-positive struggling musicians, who wears his battle with drug addiction on his sleeve, and the young drag-queen who looks like Natasha Fatale raided Jan Brady’s closet. The rest of the characters come across as self-absorbed avant-garde hedonists, ranging from the absurd to the downright unlikable. The relationships are so intertwined, it’s hard to tell who’s the good guys, and who’s the bad guys. In the end, everyone is happy and reunited, although the reasons for anyone doing anything they did are left sketchy and unclear. Unlike most musicals, this one is dark, much more so than “West Side Story”, and just when you start enjoying yourself, they drop the other shoe and you’re back in a murky funk again. In the end, if the creators behind the story had a point to make, it becomes lost in the clumsy over-production and Caligula-like attitudes of the characters and their world.

On the other hand, if you liked “American Beauty”, this one might appeal to you. Most malcontents will be able to relate to the characters, who never seem to be happy with anything unless they’re high on drugs or their own self pity. This is regrettably the only constant in the film. And unhappily, it projects an image of gays and their world in such an unpalatable light, it’s liable to set gay rights activism back fifty years. I got the impression that there was a heavy, underlying gay message in this story, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was, except maybe to show the absolute worse of what the gay community has to offer, thereby making everyone else look like upstanding citizens. But on the whole, this film simply fuels the fires of the extreme right wing. I can just imagine Anita Bryant, sitting amongst her orange trees, saying, “See? Wha’d I tell you?”

Was there any bright spot in this film for me? Only one…that as a member of the press, I got in for free.

Till next month!