"You have come here for one purpose and one alone," Butler thunders to the cheap seats as the period-incongruous, ear-splitting, organ-versus-drum-set, rock-opera orchestrations swell. Meanwhile, the scenery-chewing titular stalker rages around his incredibly lush, immaculately gaudy underground lair, singing some of the most ungainly exposition-crammed lyrics in musical history. The theater's matron (Miranda Richardson) is revealed to be in cahoots with the Phantom for no explored reason. With no story arc to speak of, the characters are left to wander in and out of loosely connected set pieces: Christine gets engaged to a vanilla viscount (Patrick Wilson) with the expressionless stage presence of a rag doll. When this pair teamed up to bring Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera" to the big screen, it was a match made in hell.Ī film of gross overacting and overproduced grandeur, yet one without a scrap of digestible character, "Phantom" opens with young and lovely understudy soprano Christine Daae (Emmy Rossum, "The Day After Tomorrow") already under the spell of an obsessed, half-handsome, half-disfigured psycho who lives underneath the most grandiose opera house in 1889 Paris.Īlthough she's never seen the Phantom (Gerard Butler), over the years she's been in the chorus he has secretly taught her, night after night in the bowels of the building, to "Sing my angel! Sing for meeeeee!" So when the joint's conspicuously talentless, tantrum-throwing Italian diva (Minnie Driver) refuses to perform one night, Christine takes her place, setting in motion a string of events that lead to the girl's star rising and the Phantom's jealousy boiling.
'Phantom of the Opera' a simplistic, sensory assault of cinematic excess directed by the guy who ruined 'Batman'Īndrew Lloyd Webber's musicals are garish, puerile melodramas with all the elegance and sincerity of a Super Bowl halftime show - and his brash, brassy songs have the depth and nuance of action-movie explosions.ĭirector Joel Schumacher was responsible for one of the most tawdry, terribly cliché-riddled action-movie bombs in Hollywood history - 1997's "Batman and Robin." Starring Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Alan Cumming, Minnie Driver, Miranda Richardson, Ciaran Hinds, Simon Callow, Victor McGuireĮven shrinking it down to the size of a movie screen didn't work - how bad do you think it's going to be on your TV? "ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER'S THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" SPLICEDwire content is available for print, web, radio & PDA starting at just $99/month! SPLICEDwire | "The Phantom of the Opera" movie review (2004) "Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera" review, Joel Schumacher, Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum The Phantom of the Opera movie review, Joel Schumacher, Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Alan Cumming, Minnie Driver, Miranda Richardson, Ciaran Hinds, Simon Callow, Victor McGuire.
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