2008 Woodie Awards
Not your typical musical
Daniel Cromar
Published: 11/10/08 at 10:27 AM PST Section: Reviews
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Enter "Repo! The Genetic Opera."
The movie tells the story of the world in the future, where an epidemic of organ failures gives rise to GeneCo, a corporation that makes it possible for ordinary people to get new organs through a financing program.
Fail to make your payments and your organs are repossessed by the repo man, or to quote a line from the movie, "He'll just rip the still beating heart from your chest."
Oh and by the way, it is a rock opera.
Not only that, it is a magnificent rock opera with an outstanding cast that is a bit of a surprise in and of itself. Alexa Vega, who also plays in the movie "Spy Kids", is surprisingly good as Shiloh, a 17-year-old girl with a blood disease who is kept in her room by her overprotective father, Anthony Head, who just happens to be the organ repo man.
The biggest surprise however, comes in the form of Paris Hilton, who plays Amber Sweet, the daughter of Rotti Largo, played by Paul Sorvino, head of GeneCo.
You would not believe it, I saw the movie and I can hardly believe it, but Paris did a great job. I guess playing a spoiled heiress is just something she is used to, because she really sells it.
Other standouts include Sarah Brightman, opera singer Blind Mag, and Kevin Ogilvie, who played Nivek Ogre from Skinny Puppy, as Pavi Largo -- another one of Largo's spoiled children.
The performance that outshines all of the others came from Terrance Zdunich, who is also one of the writers and composers for the movie. He plays the grave robber, an outlaw who extracts a painkiller known as Zydrate from dead bodies, a crime punishable by immediate execution.
Zdunich also acts as a narrator for the film, although he really is not featured that much, which actually was one of the things that annoyed me, because when he was on screen, his performance was outstanding.
That brings me to the music. First of all, I have to say that "Repo" does suffer from what I like to call "opera syndrome," which means that you can only sing every single line of dialogue for so long before it starts to get annoying.
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