Review of Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) by Nielsw — 09 Jan 2009

This film could be seen as a breath of fresh air. But that accounts for originality only, as the air itself smells quite foul in this case. To me it feels like the movie is trying too hard. The story itself is fairly interesting and the performances themselves are quite good.

But to me everything is lost when a beautifully crafted setting is interspersed with comic-book like flashbacks and a quite out of touch scene where one of the main characters has a rebellious teenage fit and the woeful gothic elements are suddenly replaced with a punk rock scene.

And the camera work isn't helping much either. The visual effects are quite nice, but with shots bouncing around from vantage point to vantage point it feels more effort was put into creating one long music video rather than capturing the actors' performances as best as possible.

At least it ends in a similar manner as every good opera does and the makers certainly deserve credit for trying to bring this sort of entertainment to the big screen. But it's trying to appeal to too many different audiences at the same time.

There are much, much better operas out there.