Critic's Notebook

MOVIE REVIEW
Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)

By ROBERT LEVIN

Steve Wilkie/Lionsgate

“Repo! The Genetic Opera”
essentially consists of bad, campy torture porn interspersed within an incessant
string of overwrought musical numbers. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that
the burden of filming the stage play by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich
should fall on Darren Lynn Bousman, heretofore best known for directing the
middle three “Saw” installments. “Repo!” deserves credit for its go-for-broke
ambition but offers little more than 98 minutes of pure cacophonic excess. In
many respects, it is as brutal an experience as the low-grade horror fare it
apes.

The story takes place in 2056, in
which an epidemic of organ failures has led to the emergence of GeneCo, a
corporation that controls the world’s tiny supply of healthy organs and offers
transplants for a price. There is but a tiny catch: GeneCo charges a steep
price that very often sends recipients of its products into debt to the company.
When they don’t pay up, GeneCo sends their way a brutal Repo Man
(Anthony Stewart Head), charged with
repossessing the organs as gruesomely as possible. A long opening sequence of
comic panels and the first of many lackadaisical songs introduces all this,
leaving far too much time for a cumbersome narrative involving the Repo Man, his repressed daughter, Shilo (Alexa Vega), and the future of GeneCo,
headed by the dying, villainous Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino).

Among the magical sights and
sounds to be beheld here: Paris Hilton’s face literally falling off, a blind
Sarah Brightman projecting holograms out of her eyes, the Repo Man completely
eviscerating several victims, and lots of garishly festooned extras jumping
around the sets like Ritalin-addled children. One shouldn’t forget the stagy
musical scenes, in which the actors aimlessly strut around while being
overwhelmed by the lyrically dense songs. In fairness, creating this took some
imagination, and Mr. Bousman should be credited for achieving an ethereal haunted
fun house style with production designer David Hackl (who later got a promotion to direct “Saw V”) and director of
photography Joseph White.

Yet, the movie so transparently
wants to be the newest “Rocky Horror Picture Show” or “Hedwig and the Angry
Inch” that it forgets that cult status must be earned, not simply desired. It
also ignores another fundamental rule for this sort of thing, forgoing the
quirky charm of its cult classic predecessors for something infinitely grimmer
and more assaultive. Odd for a film that thinks it’s so much fun to be so
overwhelmingly glum and depressing. “Repo!” badly needs some sort of lighter
touch, something or someone to say it’d be okay to actually have fun at the movie
and not let the gleeful mutilations – or Ms. Hilton – get us down.

REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA

Opens on Nov. 7 in Manhattan.

Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman; written by Darren Smith and
Terrance Zdunich, based on their stage play; director of photography,
Joseph White; edited by Harvey Rosenstock; music and lyrics by Mr.
Smith and Mr. Zdunich; production designer, David Hackl; produced by
Daniel Jason Heffner, Carl Mazzocone, Oren Koules and Mark Burg;
released by Lionsgate. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. This film is rated R.

WITH: Alexa Vega (Shilo Wallace), Anthony Stewart Head (Nathan/Repo Man), Sarah Brightman (Blind Mag), Paris Hilton (Amber Sweet), Ogre (Pavi Largo) and Paul Sorvino (Rotti Largo).