REPRO!: THE GENETIC OPERA
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman
Produced by Daniel Jason Heffner, Carl Mazzocone, Oren Koules & Mark Burg
Written by Darren Smith & Terrance Zdunich, based on their stage play
Released by Lionsgate
USA. 97 min. Rated R
With Alexa Vega, Anthony Stewart Head, Sarah Brightman, Paris Hilton, Orge, Terrance Zdunich, Bill Moseley & Paul Sorvino
 

Repo!  The Genetic Rock Opera arrives in New York this weekend—after Halloween and in the midst of awards season frenzy—touted by enthusiastic bloggers as a Rocky Horror-esque success and branded, not contradictorily, as an unmarketable albatross by its distributor Lionsgate. Within the first 20 minutes, the scattershot ingenuity and creeping boredom of the film validate both perspectives.

Repo! gets off to an encouraging start, establishing its world—a dystopian future where the biotech company GeneCo harvests and sells organs to citizens devastated by an epidemic of organ failures—in a blizzard of comic panels. Like an insurance company from hell, GeneCo employs a murderous Repo Man (Anthony Steward Head) to hunt down and retrieve organs from recipients who fail to keep up with their payment plan. Run by Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino) with his unwholesome offspring (including a passable Paris Hilton), GeneCo is an unfortunately necessary evil, keeping society alive through a grotesque version of capitalism.

Sadly, this hardcore genre-bender quickly settles into an elongated stretch of shadowy (in terms of both logic and cinematography) exposition that suffers from lazily staged musical sequences. One number, featuring the vocal stylings of Sorvino as he tries to sell a new organ plan to Shilo—the sickly yet saucy teenage girl who doesn’t know that her overprotective father is actually GeneCO’s Repo Man—takes place almost entirely in the backseat of a limo with the two principals facing each other. The motionless scene, bogged further down by an onslaught of plot details belted by Sorvino to a forgettable tune, is an assault on all things cinematic and unfortunately characteristic of several other numbers. 

In a film that’s sung almost all the way from beginning to end, you’d hope the music would be a little more energetic, or at least catchier, than it is for most of Repo! Shilo’s mysterious godmother Blind Mag (soprano Sarah Brightman), this futuristic opera’s robotic-eyed diva who may be next on the Repo Man’s hit list, livens the atmosphere with “Chase the Morning,” a song bolstered by disco beats, Brightman’s impressive voice, and a guest appearance by Shilo’s dead mother. It’s the turning point in the film. 

To a degree that nearly suggests that director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV) was just pinching his pennies for the first 50 minutes, Repo! climaxes with an impressive extravaganza, a knowingly over-the-top smorgasbord of absurd images that features a Jewish grandmother DJ, Paris Hilton’s face peeling off, Sorvino’s dance moves, breast baring, bloody violence, plenty of drama, engaging music, and a theme that endorses free will over genetic predetermination. Repo! eventually proves to be a lot of fun, with shrewd parallels to today’s health care crisis. The problem is that the fun shouldn’t have to be so arduously earned. Patrick Wood
November 7, 2008