Repo! The Genetic Opera

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a wannabe cult classic. One that audiences will either find original and cinematically refreshing or ridiculous and bombastically pompous. I fall into the latter category. I respect that the film attempted to be different and show us a different approach at the horror genre in general, but unfortunately the "A for effort" rule does not apply in this situation.

The film starts off reasonably cool, with comic book panels giving us the backstory and synopsis. However, just when you thought the movie would be good…characters start singing. On second thought, I doubt it could even be called singing. In fact, the music and lyrics of the songs are completely and totally unsynchronized depriving the entire movie of any sort of melody or catchiness (I say the whole movie because, literally, the ENITRE movie is sung, no exaggeration). There's also the fact that most of the songs really don't have a rhyme scheme. It's a pretty bad thing for me to say that within its 100 minute runtime, only 4 minutes of it is actually worth listening to. It doesn't help that only a select few of the cast has the necessary pipes to be belting out the songs that they do. Alexa Vega of Spy Kids fame did her damnedest to get on my nerves and boy, did she. Paris Hilton was also painfully bad, but thankfully her role is a small one and that which reflects her own life (a whore) so she doesn't have to make too much of a stretch as far as acting goes. Speaking of acting, every single character was played so over the top, but with no consistent tone or attitude. I wasn't able to see if the filmmakers were taking themselves too seriously or just having fun with the material, which lead to a frustrating confusion on my part as far as what to expect went.

As many problems as this movie does have, I really did enjoy the story. The drama that's presented to us builds and builds showing us each character's backstory and motivation. This made me care about what would happen next in the story, but the difficulty of following the lyrics and the poor mishandling of the material led to my lack of trying to follow what was going on. I also particularly liked Anthony Head's performance. He was brooding and menacing in the (decidedly awesome) Repo Man costume and could also be a sympathetic character when he had to be. His voice was also pretty good, but unfortunately, the awkwardness of all the songs restrained him from being totally effective.

I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. Being blown away by Sweeney Todd and totally digging the visual style of it all, I was expecting a similar experience, however, I was left in the dust, as this is one of the most disappointingly awful movies I've ever seen. The story is there and probably could've been done to greater effect with a different director (and musical writers, giving the movie more of a musical edge than an all out opera) but without all that, this is The Little Movie That Couldn't.

Final Rating: 3 out of 10