The East Side Story called "Rent" is full of Bohemians singing from fire escapes, much like the Jets and Sharks across town. "No Day But Today" -- as opposed to "Tonight" -- is the time period they're romanticizing and living to the fullest in Jonathan Larson's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit, now finally materializing on screen.

	'Rent' Rating: PG-13 for sex-and-drugs thematic material and some strong language Starring: Adam Pascal, Rosario Dawson, Anthony Rapp, Idinia Menzel, Tracie Thoms, Jesse L. Martin, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Taye Diggs Director: Chris Columbus 'Rent' Web site

The preferred term is rock opera, appropriately enough, for the 1996 musical inspired by Puccini's "La Boheme" that has enjoyed 4,000 performances to date and captured the hearts of two young generations. They, plus plenty of their elders, powerfully identify with its yearnings for avant-garde art and love in the age of urban poverty, drug addiction and AIDS.

The characters populating these lower depths of Manhattan's East Village are derived from the tragicomic people Larson knew: Mimi (Rosario Dawson) -- the boheme herself -- is the Cat Scratch Club erotic dancer and downstairs neighbor of Roger (Adam Pascal), the aspiring and grieving songwriter who seems to be falling in love with her.

Actually, "aspiring" is the generic adjective for just about everybody in the gang.

Nerdy Mark (Anthony Rapp) is busy shooting a cutting-edge documentary, trying and largely failing to get over his rejection by Maureen (Idinia Menzel), a Patti-Smith-meets-Sandra-Bernhard kind of performance artist, who has traded him in for jealous Joanne (Tracie Thoms).

Tom (Jesse L. Martin) gets mugged, and cross-dressing Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) comes to his emotional rescue, crossing over to the film after winning a Tony for the role on stage.

Ex-pal Benny (Taye Diggs), meanwhile, has crossed over to the enemy and is now the landlord's agent demanding their overdue rent -- yet the nicest villain in the world.

All but Dawson and Thoms are from the original Broadway cast, and all are effective. "There will always be women in rubber flirting with me," hilarious Maureen tells jealous Jo.

Kudos to director Chris Columbus ("Home Alone," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone") for the casting. It took years for him (and his wonderfully named 1492 Pictures company) to partner up with co-producers Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro (and their wonderfully creative Tribeca Productions), but it was worth the wait. Lower Manhattanites all, they have replicated the gritty realism of the show's pre- (or is it post-?) apocalyptic New York end-of-millennium milieu: A peripatetic camera perfectly catches, caresses or cruises past the rooftop water towers, and it finds fiery eviction notices burning and blowing in the wind.

The film's new musical arrangements have a harder (as well as more cutting) edge than the play's. Soundtracks were completed before principal photography even began, and better-than-usual-lip-synching somehow achieved. Particularly terrific is the famous "Tango Maureen" (and its choreography), and I'm always a sucker for Mimi's lovely "Would You Light My Candle?"

Angel's big Santa Claus drag act is weak, and the enforced gaiety of the big production number "La Vie Boheme" didn't do much for me. But "Over the Moon" and "Seasons of Love" did. The wrenchingly beautiful AIDS song "Will I?" is performed with great dignity, indeed.

As a composer, the lyrics and simplistic repetitive harmonies by Larson, who died at age 36, just days before his musical debuted on Broadway, are no match for Bernstein/Sondheim, and "Rent" is no "Tommy" or "Hair" -- not really as revolutionary as it claims to be. But these strangely agreeable, unpredictably structured songs make for a film (like the show) that even cynics can't scoff at -- or resist. Along with their angst and self-indulgent issues, these inspirational deadbeat "Renters" offer honesty and hope as more than fair compensation for their unpaid bills.