I won’t lie, I was a Goth kid and even if I traded in my mascara and dresses for something a bit more traditional since those years of confused adolescence, I enjoy every now and then the occasional stimulation of the Goth gland. That is why on this dark and cold October night with a nor’easter turning Philadelphia into water world I decided it was the perfect moment to rent The Crow… which was rented out already. Frustrated about my defeat at the TLA, I looked onto the new releases in hopes of finding something which would suddenly fulfill my desire for generically dark.
That is how I fell upon Repo: The Genetic Opera and, honestly, if you saw the same DVD cover (shown here) wouldn’t you think you were on the right track? Well, regardless of your answer, I did and for the first fifteen minutes or so of this movie I was blown away into a Goth dork fantasy of the blickity blackest dark of obscurity of my teenage Goth shadowy past.
I seriously thought for a short while that I was looking at the rightful successor to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, a musical which touched me both in the silliest and also most profound way at the same time; until I realized that the film was not going to deliver on either of those aspects and I was going to get a gonzo of all the bad elements from Moulin Rouge, Dr. Horrible, Romeo and Juliet. This is the most frustrating kind of film for me to review because I wanted to like this movie, more than you can imagine, there was so much to like: it was dark, the costumes were amazing, the atmosphere was well set up, the sets were wonderful and the colors were vibrant in their moonlit shades. But this is just like being on the most amazing date you ever went out on who nevertheless continues to get on your nerves by eating with her mouth open, saying ‘like’ all over the place and talking complete nonsense, you cannot deny that it was a complete waste of time.
The film is officially an opera, but it is not and ‘circus’ at times seems to be a better word, what’s more, it is not the same as Rocky because Rocky knows it is not serious, but still pretends it is in a deliciously ironic way that it is, Repo, on the other hand, purposely stays in silly-land trying to be Dr. Horrible, which is a shame because if it had just not been afraid to go over the top it was on its way to greatness. All of the children characters are wrong. I won’t even blame the actors, the direction is clearly off the rocker here: they are one of the many elements which degenerate to clownish activity which I can only describe as disengaging, if not completely separated from the established mood in the beginning. The songs are awful, not a single one I remember, want to remember, want to hum or even think struck me as anything more than exactly what is wrong with musicals when people make fun of them: you can’t just sing dialogue, your dialogue should be a song and if you don’t see the difference between those two, you are most likely one of the writers of this atrocity.
I won’t play the Paris Hilton card because to be honest I wasn’t even aware I was watching her in this movie since she wears so much makeup and in any case is about a generic looking as you’re going to find on the Hollywood circuit. In all fairness to her as an actress, if I am not going to hell for calling her that as it is, her performance is not even the worst in the film- that prize goes to the annoyingly untalented Alexa Vega who should never play in anything else ever again in the history of cinema… ever. It’s not the sound I would expect from this kind of genre, it sounds nothing like kaRIN (yes, I spelled it right) but more like Taylor Swift, which is a problem because her sound has no place in this kind of film. Every time I heard her sing, I thought I was going to get a rendition of Love Story. Seriously, where the heck is Bjiork when you really need her?
This film broke my heart, by the end I found it had degenerate into a worthless photocopy of Moulin Rouge, and believe me, I am restraining myself. Every moment there was something truly beautiful on screen and I thought I might be able to overlook the imperfections, even towards the end when there was clearly a litany of bad acting, terrible songs and practically inexistent plot, I thought maybe the film could rise from the ashes.
Darren Lynn Bousman, I hate you…
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