A long-running Broadway play brought to the big screen, “Rent” is a rock-laced musical based upon the classic opera “La Boheme.”

Despite a lead-in like this, the final product is neither pretentious nor tacky, nihilistic nor fantastic, brooding nor bright.

Instead, “Rent” is a vibrant mixture of contrasting elements that express the bittersweet melody of Bohemian struggle amid the AIDS epidemic in the early ’90s.

Mark Cohen (Anthony Rapp) is a filmmaker struggling to cut his teeth in the poverty and decay of urban New York. Mark rooms with his brooding, AIDS-infected rocker buddy Roger (Adam Pascal), the object of attraction for Mimi (Rosario Dawson), the energetic stripper next door. In addition, Mark has to contend with his former friend turned landlord Benny (Taye Diggs) and his ex-turned-lesbian Maureen (Idina Menzel), along with her new girlfriend Joanne (Tracie Thoms). Toss in his other friend, ex-MIT intellectual Tom Collins (Jesse L. Martin) and his drag queen love Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), and Mark has plenty of source material for his documentary.

Directed by Chris Columbus (“Stepmom,” “Home Alone”) “Rent” is an effective yet condensed adaptation of the Broadway play. Columbus is able to use the medium shift to add a new sense of time and motion, while still preserving the individuality of the characters felt in the play. Still, clocking in at two hours, the film seems very rushed, especially in the second act.

Overall, the story of “Rent” remains intact after the condensing, but there are moments when characters suffer from a lack of development. Benny, in particular, who is constructed more as a catalyst as opposed to an antagonist, lacks the redemptive depth he is given in the musical. The fallout of Mimi and Roger’s relationship near the climax also feels too heavy-handed and two-dimensional.

As one character says, “I’m a New Yorker. Fear is my life.” This is important because while films like “Red-Eye” present a post-9/11 world view, “Rent” shows the decade before the crisis just as marred by hardship and struggle.

Characters on the frontline of poverty, AIDS and drug addiction strive to find some degree of normalcy in their lives. But the core of “Rent” stretches beyond race, gender and sexuality, finding strength in the voice of idea and identity in order to combat the harsh realities of the modern world.