Review: Repo: The Genetic Opera(2008)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                     REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: This is a Grand Guignol science fiction
     rock opera starring Alexa Vega, Paul Sorvino, and
     Anthony Head.  Rotti Largo, the man who supplies
     the world with synthetic transplant organs, became
     the most powerful man in the world during a strange
     epidemic.  As he nears death there is a struggle
     for who will inherit his empire after he dies.  The
     plot is minimal and for a rock opera, there is too
     little real melody.  Visually the film is a little
     nauseating but otherwise very inventive.  Darren
     Lynn Bousman, director of three sequels to SAW,
     helms this film with what I would guess is the same
     sensitivity.  Rating: low +1 (-4 to +4) or 5/10

The time is somewhere around the middle years of the 21st Century.
The world has been ravaged by a strange plague that attacks by
destroying internal organs.  There are not enough natural organs to
go around for all the transplants that are needed.  But a company
named GeneCo has fulfilled the demand.  They have perfected
artificial organs that function like the real thing.  That is the
good news.  The bad news is that like any medical technology these
days, the artificial organs are very expensive.  When it is a
question of living or dying, many are willing to pay the price and
GeneCo offers easy credit.  GeneCo has become the wealthiest
company in the world.  But large numbers of organ recipients are
deeply in debt to GeneCo.  When they cannot pay GeneCo sends the
Repo Man to legally repossess the organs from their living bodies
and leave them bleeding and dying.

The owner of GeneCo is the ruthless medical industrialist Rotti
Largo (played by Paul Sorvino).  He has three has three children
vying to be the most cold-blooded to prove they are worthy to run
the empire.  Meanwhile we meet Shilo Wallace (Alexa Vega) is a
teenager with blood disease that keeps her at home.  She is
discovering that her dead mother has a history with Rotto Largo.
And Nathan, her father ("Buffy"'s Anthony Head), may also have had
other involvements with the most powerful man in the world.  This
is all told in a world in which the smart set lives ignoring the
gruesome violence in their society that they pass every day.  By
the time the story is over everybody seems to be awash in the spilt
blood.  The plot does have some interesting concepts behind it
somewhere deep in the bloody organs.

The color palette is usually very controlled with strong colors
suited to the mood of the scene.  That also enhances the graphic
novel feel of the film.  The film uses the gimmick of having all
the expository lumps presented as comic book panels.

Reader Susan de Guardiola, who recommended the film to me, said
that she could not get the music out of her head.  The reason she
is still humming the music is what is most wrong with the movie.
It may be a question of musical taste, but the music is all short
repetitive note combinations without more than a rudimentary
melody.  You can find some of that style in JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR,
but that also has longer and more engaging melodies such as "I
Don't Know How To Love Him".  In REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA someone
will be saying things in a five-note theme repeated three times,
then will get a response to the same five-note theme.  Pretty soon
you cannot get that five-note theme out of your head.  The Top-40
stations work by the same principle of repetitions.  But there are
no longer engaging melodies.  Much of the music is not so much sung
as yelled to the sound of a heavy beat.  That makes the music all
the less appreciated when it overstays its welcome and becomes an
earworm.

Along for the ride in lesser roles are Sarah Brightman and Paris
Hilton.  The screenplay is by Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich
based on their own stage play.  (Smith has a role as a bandleader
and Zdunich plays the film's host and the grave robber.)  There are
numerous borrowings (or perhaps homages) to other musicals.
However, the screenplay is probably more timely today than when it
was first produced on the stage with themes of credit problems and
corporate malfeasance, both on people's minds right now.

It is hard to get excited about songs of ecstasy over getting
kidney transplants or people who rip out their own eyes.  I rate
REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale or 5/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0963194/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/repo_the_genetic_opera/>

Susan de Guardiola's extensive blog on the film:
<http://www.rixosous.com/2009/02/repo-the-genetic-opera.html>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper