RENT — ** — Anthony Rapp, Jesse L. Martin, Rosario Dawson; rated PG-13 (drugs, sex, vulgarity, profanity, partial nudity); Carmike 12 and Ritz 15 Theaters; Century Theatres 16; Cinemark 24 at Jordan Landing; CinemaStar Gateway 8 Cinemas; Megaplex 17 at Jordan Commons.

Leaving the world of "Harry Potter" for Manhattan's low-rent district, director Chris Columbus has come up with something . . . well . . . shy of magical.

As he showed with the first two "Potter" movies, Columbus has a knack for making big movies that are far less interesting than their source material. With "Rent," Columbus delivers an elaborately constructed yet unimaginative rendering of the Broadway musical smash about lovers and friends coping with poverty, AIDS and addiction.

While the movie takes some of the action to the streets and balconies, alleys and sidewalks, it still feels cloistered, with no strong sense that the story truly has moved off the stage into the real world.

Columbus has the grandest city in the world to shoot in, but far too much of the action is in static locations. The musical numbers suffer for their stagy presentation in this loft apartment or that squatter's flat.

When Columbus does move things outdoors, the settings often look surreally cheap, like backlot copies of New York streets, even though cast and crew did a fair amount of shooting at actual exteriors throughout the city.

The music and lyrics of "Rent" creator Jonathan Larson, who died as the show was going into previews in 1996, are performed with gusto by the cast, most of them veterans of the original Broadway production.

Yet the hard-rock arrangements Columbus chose to back the songs are thin, boring, mechanical instrumentations, whose cheesy rhythms are an insult to the passion of the vocals.

A modern update of Puccini's opera "La Boheme," "Rent" centers on a group of bohemian pals and lovers determined to live for art and individuality in a 1980s world of commerce that views their kind as expendable.

Artist Central, where the gang spends much of its time, is the loft of singer-songwriter Roger (Adam Pascal) and filmmaker Mark (Anthony Rapp), who's perpetually shooting a documentary about "La Vie Boheme," their maverick lifestyle.

Ex-junkie Roger, who lost a girlfriend to AIDS and has the infection himself, is gradually drawn into new romance with downstairs neighbor Mimi (Rosario Dawson), an exotic dancer addicted to heroin who's also HIV-positive.