REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA

Lionsgate/ Twisted Pictures
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: C
Directed by: Darren Lynn Bousman
Written By: Darren Smith, Terrance Zdunich
Cast: Anthony Stewart Head, Alexa Vega, Paul Sorvino, Terrance Zdunich, Bill Moseley, Nivek Ogre, Paris Hilton, Sarah Brightman
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 10/28/08
Opens: November 7, 2008

Fans of Broadway musicals tired of the same ol’, the revivals, the saccharine romantic music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, may be curious about “Repo! The Genetic Opera,” which almost ironically has a part for Webber favorite and former squeeze, Sarah Brightman. This is an opera all right—though the term may scare away the principal audience of midnight, cultish classics like “The Rocky Horror Show.” The sounds are as dissonant as you can get, perhaps even able to irritate the ears of the father of atonal Broadway musicals, Stephen Sondheim.

“Repo!,” which evokes the dark production style of Tim Burton, famed for such notable works as “Beetlejuice,” “Batman Forever,” and “Edward Scissorhands,” has the misfortune of being pitched at a high level throughout—no time for a breather, a quiet moment. Nor are the gory details prolonged for a sufficient time to get the audience either nauseated or bent over with ironic laughter. Fans of “Hostel” and “Hostel II” may find it insufficiently gory particularly since the entire picture is shot without the benefit of bright lights or with individuals for whom one might feel pity.

The drama takes place in the year 2050. one involving the macabre duties of a company called GeneCo, which is profiting from an epidemic of human organ failures. GeneCo for a price will furnish a sick individual with what is needed, whether that be a kidney, a heart, a small or large intestine, a concept may remind one of the need of three characters in the G-rated “The Wizard of Oz.” Darren Lynn Bousman, equipped for the project from his background as director of “Saw II, III and IV,” helms scripters Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich’s opera based on their stage play in L.A. The company sounds like just what the doctor ordered, except that when a patient defaults on payments (apparently none of the health plans adopted during the administration of America’s forty-fourth president covers transplants), a repo man is sent to foreclose: to cut open the individual in default and reclaim the organ. A second string involves the guilt feeling of a scientist cum repo man, Nathan (Anthony Stewart Head), who believes he is to blame for his wife’s death and subsequent illness of his daughter, Shilo (Alexa Vega—who looks grown up after her duties years ago in “Spy Kids,” At the head of GeneCo is the smirking Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino) who gives the order to repossess organs to the repo man, aided by his psychotic sons Luigi (Bill Moseley) and Pavi (Nivek Ogre).

Alexa Vega turns in a convincing performance as the one of the few innocents in the story, a seventeen-year-old eager to learn the cause of her mother’s death, while Sarah Brightman almost conveys the resonance of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals in her portrayal of one Blind Mag. Paris Hilton does OK in a thankfully limited role.

The entire movie seems to have been acted out while director Bousman was taking a nap, not an easy thing to do given the riotous nature of the jarring music. For a classier choice, rent or buy the DVD of Tim Burton’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” which has the disciplined script of John Logan and the superb sounds of Stephen Sondheim, still the stage composer par excellence in the U.S. today. Then again the whole project is apparently a spoof of the horror genre, as though to say, “What’s there to criticize? We’re deliberately sending up the form!”

Not Rated. 98 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online