Before watching the movie:
There was a brief period in the 2000s when a lot of the great Broadway musicals of the last few decades were brought to movie theaters. Rent is one of the most modern musicals in that sweep, but what I know about it is basically “a bunch of young friends trying to keep going when their high rent is starving them” and “the AIDS musical”.
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Before watching the movie:
I was vaguely aware of this movie coming out, and it looked vaguely interesting, but I couldn’t really tell much about it from what I saw. This poster, which is just about all the promotional material I saw at the time, tells you that it stars Eddie Murphy, that he’s having adventures on the moon, and it looks vaguely like throwback to the Flash Gordon serials.
This has since become known as one of Eddie Murphy’s biggest flops, which is a distinction with a lot of competition from the 90s through the 00s. I always got the idea it was either not the movie audiences wanted it to be or didn’t hit the tone it was trying for, or both. I can certainly see Summer 2002 being a very bad time for an homage/parody of 30s pulp sci-fi.
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Yesterday's Movies 