FINlos reviews…

…REPO! The Genetic Opera

Jan 31

FINlosdaily life, pop culture 2 Comments

A few months back a student of mine brought in a soundtrack for a movie that she was psyched about. It was some trashy goth affair with a mostly industrial grind aesthetic to it, which wasn’t to say it was bad. She explained that the film was actually a musical, and then she threw the title at me. I admit, I laughed a little at first. But I indulged her enthusiasm and looked up the trailer. Like the music, it was a trashy goth affair with a mostly industrial grind aesthetic. But then my mind was changed when a face appeared that matched a familiar voice in the music. Anthony Steward Head was one of the leads, I knew I had to see it.

Any Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan will recognize the name. But for those of you who are unfamiliar, he is the actor who played Rupert Giles, Buffy’s watcher, her trainer who becomes more like a father to her. He has also appeared in many other stage and TV productions, including The Rocky Horror Show where he played the role of Frank N Furter. But for me, he will always be Giles. This is important to the review of this film because there was a key episode in the Buffyverse that was a musical in which Head outclassed the rest of the cast with his singing ability.

As I watched the trailer I became more and more fascinated by the mishmash of noise and artifice that was flaring before me. The short clips gave nothing of plot (usually a bad sign that there isn’t one) and focused almost entirely on the garishness of the setting. The whole thing was awash in cheap pleather and tasteless neon with healthy helpings of blood and gore ladled over everything. In my brief research I found that it was being directed by Darren Lynn Bousman of the Saw series of halloween teen trash flicks (He actually directed the first complete stage production of REPO! before he did any movies). I was ready to write the whole thing off, but Anthony Stewart Head’s presence kept calling me back. Because, as cheesy and silly as Buffy often got, Head in his role as Giles was always dependable as a solid actor who could give depth and emotion to the series. He is an actor of some merit.

In further research I found that the film is actually based on an evolving and elaborate stage show. I felt that this, in addition to Giles… I mean Anthony Stewart Head’s involvement might perhaps lend further credibility, or I was just rationalizing my interest in an obviously craptastic film shot by a director with a craptastic track record. In any case, the film saw extremely limited theatrical release in November of 2007 and then disappeared.

I got a Blu-Ray player for the Holidays and have been on the lookout for films that might display this new mediums strengths. I was snooping on Amazon looking for bargains (can you believe how expensive BRD movies are?) and saw that REPO! was releasing the following week, and for cheap. I had mostly written the film off, not really thinking about it once it fell off the radar, but seeing it releasing at such a low price, I figure it couldn’t hurt, and at least the noisy music and bright colors would show off the wonders of the HD era. I brought the movie home. Although I had shown the trailer to my wife at the time I first saw it, she had difficulty remembering what I was talking about. “You know, the musical with Giles… I mean Anthony Steward Head in it!” She played along and we sat down on the couch and prepared for whatever came our way.

I find myself struggling with the best way to present the film.

There is a plot, vaguely. Well, it’s more of a premise from which the movie stems that sort of winds its way into a plot that has been shoved into the format of a narrative.

Future. Organs for sale. Body modification addiction. People can’t food their bills. The Repo man reclaims the organ for generic oppressive corporation (GeneCo) run by stereotypical Italian mobster and dysfunctional family.

That’s the premise.

From it there is derived a somewhat contrived tale of backstabbing, murder, overprotective parents, obscenely stupid siblings, and a daughter who is trapped in her bedroom but sneaks out to her mothers tomb and manages to be kidnapped like three times. Oh, I forgot about the blind opera singer played by Sarah Brightman who vocally blows everyone away, but whose character ends up going no where.

Scared away yet? But I haven’t even mentioned the grave robbing, the surgery addiction, the piles of dead bodies that serve no purpose, the pilfered imagery of other films from Blade Runner to Dark City, or the fact that there is absolutely no continuity from moment to moment. Oh yeah, it has Paris Hilton. Singing. Badly.

Most musicals tend to have a flow, one song transitioning into the next by theme, or  dialogue, or whatever. This movie has all of those pieces, they just don‘t function as they should. What results is a series of vignettes, very elaborate music videos stitched together by an overly elaborate story. Had the filmmakers focused less on grotesquerie and noise, they may have had more opportunity to refine the storytelling, the flow of the music. And as if the whole grandiose spectacle of a goth/horror opera/musical monstrosity were not enough, they added comic book styled animated segments to introduce sections of the move. Obviously they knew that the audience would need some guidance through the quagmire.

The music itself it passable. As a fan of industrial rock (think Nine Inch Nails or Skinny Puppy, but not as good) I thought it was mostly decent. The vocals from the leads were acceptable, but Brightman’s and Giles’… I mean Head’s were the obvious high points. And as with all operatic/musical productions the music mostly serves as exposition to the action being portrayed. But REPO! has the benefit of having at least a couple catchy tunes that are worth listening to, if you don’t mind crunchy guitars or thumping beats.

But through it all, we have Giles… I mean Anthony Stewart Head. I really don’t know what he’s doing in this movie. I mean, they made him cover his awesome British accent with some obviously forced American impersonation when he had lines to speak. But through it all he carries his role with dignity. His vocals were consistently the strongest, wedged between Alexa Vega’s (Spy Kids says hello) screeching and Paul Sorvino’s (“hey, didn’t I have some credibility as a badass gangster in Goodfellas?”) over the top operatic howls. His character is the only one with any depth, any portrayal of emotion beyond “OHGODI’MCRAZY!” or “OHMYGODWHATHAPPENEDTOMYMOM?” He actually has some sort of acting range in this gory hodgepodge. And you know, his scenes are pretty good.

But the movie does have some interesting commentary worth observing. It is quite easy to imagine a future where organs are grown by corporations and then sold to consumers on credit. Body modification addicts, repeat plastic surgeries, the pursuit of the perfection projected by society, these things are already present. It isn’t too hard to imagine people buying new faces or surgically altering the color of their eyes or switching out their kidneys or a liver if their health becomes questionable.

Also, the Repo Man is an interesting character for who he is in the movie and what he represents as a metaphor. The dual role of gifted doctor and loving father is nicely contrasted with the cold efficiency of the corporate assassin. I really enjoyed Giles’… I mean Anthony Stewart Head’s portrayal of the switch between the two halves of the character. His vocal and singing styles switch from sweet and soothing to harsh and guttural respectively. And while a simple technique, it is effective and offers some variation in song. And I’ll be honest, it’s fun to watch him slice and dice as he sings. But the Repo Man also represents a very real fear of the middle class, repossession. In this culture of credit and financing, who doesn’t fear the Repo Man hunting you down to take back what you can no longer afford. It really is the nightmare of this day.

In the end, it’s a difficult call. REPO! The Genetic Opera is not a good movie. It never gets very far beyond its disparate parts and struggles to be anything more than a very elaborate spectacle of rock and gore. But I can’t say that I didn’t find some enjoyment in it. It is fun, and never takes itself too seriously. I will even go so far as to say that some of the songs are good and have decent staging. And it has GILES!

I think the film makers want this to become the new Rocky Horror Picture Show, the movie you pull out at Halloween and sing along with your friends with the volume as high as it can go. Repo! has no “Time Warp” and I doubt it will ever find that large of a following. But I think the Repo Man is a character that has enough depth to carry the movie and may even have a future in my future movie watching. There is fun to be had with a group of friends, the lights turned down and the stereo turned up.

Rated two and one-half stars for sensational gaudiness that still manages a modicum of fun. Watch it for the Repo Man and ignore the rest.