Tonight the Cap'n will fill you in on Repo! The Genetic Opera, just in case you run into someone that says "have you ever seen...?". The good news for you is that's only likely to happen in one of two places: outside of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or at Hot Topic.
In fact, this movie ought to be called Hot Topic! The Genetic Opera, because that's exactly who this movie is targeted to. People who wear Invader Zim t-shirts and carry Jack Skellington lunchboxes while skulking around in JNKOS and listening to the nu-metal flavor of the month. Because "normal" people just don't get their pain. They're going to eat this movie up like like a popsicle of Marilyn Manson Brand Absinthe*.
And maybe that's not such a bad thing. I can't say that I really liked Repo: The Genetic Opera, but I have respect for Darren Lynn Bousman for adapting this stage production to a movie. If anything, Repo! presents a very particular vision and sticks to it all the way through, even when it doesn't quite work. Were it not for an unnecessary flashback montage near the very end, I wouldn't have guessed this was the same guy who made Saw II**.
The cast floats between adequate and unfortunate, with a couple surprises and a totally out of left field cameo. Actually, I take that back: for the song that Joan Jett inexplicably appears in, it's thematically logical. Just not logical considering the rest of the cast. I guess if there's a lead character in the movie, it's Alexa Vega (the Spy Kids movies) who plays the pale, wig wearing proto-goth Shilo. She's bald because of some skin disease that killed her mother and plagues her father Nathan, played by Anthony Stewart Head (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).
Nathan has a secret, because this is supposedly an opera (more on that later), and we find out he's actually a Repo Man in the employ of Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino), the owner of GeneCo. GeneCo sells organs to people who need / want them and if they get behind on payments, the Repo Man comes and collects the organs. Largo has three children: Luigi (Bill Moseley), Ravi (Orge from Skinny Puppy), and Amber Sweet (Paris Hilton), who are all equally shitty people and behave like children who kill people.
There's some intrigue and love triangles and other nonsense you don't really need to know in order to talk shop about Repo!, but helpfully for the film many of these expository pieces are told in comic book panels by a narrator / graverobber (Terrance Zdunich, co-writer of the stage version). Graverobbers exist not to steal organs but to extract some drug from corpses that's highly addictive. This element of the film is only addressed briefly and frankly would only make less sense if they had tried to explain it. All you need to know is that it's like a blue version of Herbert West's ReAgent and it kills pain.
What I would consider to be the film's biggest coup was getting Sarah Brightman (stage productions of Phantom of the Opera) to play Blind Mag, who was blind but isn't currently, so the name is a little unnecessary. She has eyes that can play videos outwards, and appropriately enough shows Shilo her mother singing in one scene. Brightman and, oddly, Sorvino are the best singers in the movie, and it kind of moves incrementally down from there.
It's not that Anthony Stewart Head can't sing; I just never took to his voice, even in the Buffy musical episode. He has a double problem here because Head is playing an American and tries very hard to carry over the American accent to his singing, with mixed results. Since he starts the film singing, I didn't know he was supposed to be American until he started talking. I just though good old Giles had taken up organ hunting. Zdunich and Ogre do what they're supposed to do just fine, Vega is okay but clearly from that Disney style of "kid" singing. Paris Hilton's character is supposed to sound awful so I'm going to give her a pass for living up to that, but Bill Moseley is just terrible.
Now I understand why I hated "Mark It Up" when I saw it online: Moseley can't carry a tune to save his life, even if he plays the character with bluster. The song also doesn't work out of context because you really have to be in the world of Repo! for any of these songs to work. Like I said before, Bousman, Zdunich, and Darren Smith have a very particular vision for the film and it doesn't translate outside of the film.
Addressing the "opera" component: I'm not exactly sure this is an opera since there are periods of time where nobody sings at all and dialogue rules the day. This is a little more like Sweeney Todd, which I wouldn't classify as an opera. Repo! is certainly a musical, and the transition from dialogue to singing occurs frequently, but there are clearly songs that begin and end. They may not have a chorus that's discernable, or all be particularly good, but the songs fit the movie.
Even if I had been a big fan of the movie I would never buy the soundtrack. The songs wouldn't work on their own, and frankly many of them aren't the kind of song you'd sing along to outside of midnight screenings of Repo!.
That, by the way, will eventually happen. The Cap'n went 0 for 2 in "manufactured cult classics" this year. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer and Repo! The Genetic Opera are both movies that will have some following in the years to come. I liked Brooks more than Repo! but don't be shocked at sequels to Monster Slayer or a growing "cult" movement for Repo!. The films are built that way, and personal taste aside, they largely succeed in their efforts. I respect Repo! for putting such a wild vision out there, which is way more than I expected.
So now you know pretty much all the nuts and bolts of Repo! The Genetic Opera. I'd go so far as to say a few of you might enjoy it, but not many. I know the tastes of a lot of you, and Repo! is not going to rock your world. It is better than Saw II and more competent than the ads lead you to believe, but you REALLY have to be willing to go along for the ride.
Repo! The Genetic Opera is not for everybody. It's probably not for you, but the people who love it are going to LOVE IT for a long time. Hell, the design of the Repo Man's suit is iconic enough that if they made a figure of it, I might buy it. There are things to enjoy, but for most of you, the Cap'n watched Repo! so you wouldn't have to...
* there is such a thing.
** and III, but I never watched that one.
No comments:
Post a Comment