Overall Rating
  Awesome: 42.67%
Worth A Look: 9.05%
Average: 4.31%
Pretty Bad: 17.24%
Total Crap: 26.72%
12 reviews, 160 user ratings
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| Phantom of the Opera, The (2004) |
by Scott Weinberg
"Could do for modern movie musicals what XANADU did for the old ones."
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See, here's the problem: this movie was made exclusively for those who already love, adore and fetishize the stage play on which it is based. It's made to jog the memory of those who (somehow) remember Andrew Lloyd Webber's leaden chords with some fondness and to hopefully coax those people into buying a whole new soundtrack CD. Actually, "The Phantom of the Opera" feels like little more than a 2+ hour promotional video for perfume, jewelry, corsets and curtains. It's lead-footed, empty-headed and tone-deaf. Were it not for the superlative work from the various set designers and costumers, this would be the "Battlefield Earth" of modern movie musicals.Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first: I harbor no ill-will or animosity towards director Joel Schumacher. Huge handfuls of passionate movie fans still want Joe's head on a pike for Batman & Robin. I say grow up already, kids. Say what you like about Schumacher, but the guy's had a pretty eclectic career for the last 20-some years, and for every massive misstep like Batman & Robin or Bad Company, the director has made amends with titles like Falling Down, Phone Booth, and Tigerland.
But there's just no getting around it: Schumacher's latest, the endlessly lumbering and consistently yawn-worthy Phantom of the Opera, is a big, expensive turkey. Knowing very little about the whole Phantom phenomenon before the cinema lights went down, I was quite optimistic about the movie. I consider myself a fan of musicals, and surely something this universally adored could entertain me as well.
The film opens as the play does: with a black and white setting, which immediately tells us two things: that this movie is a Flashback Tale, and that most of us hate the Flashback gimmick. But then comes something pretty slick: the color slams onto the screen and the music kicks up and there's a real richness and joyous theatricality to what's onscreen. I was enthused.
It lasted about 45 seconds. First off, I just couldn't stand the music. So if the original Broadway score to Phantom of the Opera is one of your most cherished desert island discs, then please feel free to dismiss my complaints as some "guy" who just didn't get "it." I will contend that there's more art, heart, pulse and passion in five random minutes of Moulin Rouge then there is in the whole of The Phantom of the Opera's virtually endless behemoth.
You all know the story by now, I'm sure. But here it is again: imagine a not very unique variation on the tired old "Beauty and the Beast" premise...in a sumptuous opera house. Our romantic lead/deformed villain has the hots for Christine, who is a perfectly sculpted little singing ingenue who looks great in a corset and has the personality of a porcelain vase. The hideous phantom, forever clad in a plastic mask that covers perhaps 20% of his face and looks like something straight out of Star Trek, is forever kidnapping, cajoling, whining and begging young Chrissy to join him in the underground catacombs, where they will both sing to each other about loss and love and yearning and the omnipresent angst of subterranean facial deformities. Of course a handsome, non-deformed gentleman starts sniffing around, and of course there's a stunningly obnoxious diva-star who's just about begging for a chandelier to the forehead. There are theater managers and stage directors and random blonde beauties boasting curvy hips and tone-deaf lips.
There's one noteworthy spark of life, and it goes by the name of Minnie Driver. As the ever-coddled and stunningly spoiled Carlotta, Ms. Driver brings a big bag of over-emphasized accents, surly sneers and cartoonish eye-rollings. She's an all-too-brief moment of color in a bog of gothic colors and florid whimpers. Leads Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum are given nothing to do with their characters; they exist solely as jukeboxes in tights. There's no heart or soul behind these characters, and no amount of 12-minute ballads can change the fact that we're watching life-size dolls bellowing Hallmark Card sentiments at one another.
Frankly I even found the movie a little bit insulting: it never even tries to embrace the uninitiated members of the audience. Imagine if Spider-Man began with no backstory, no origin of Parker's superpowers. It just plopped you right into the middle of a battle between a human spider and a green mutant on a sled. The neophytes would feel left out and lost; the Spidey freaks would feel cheated and angry. That would be some pretty sloppy filmmaking, and that's precisely what's up with The Phantom of the Opera: it exists only to be admired by those who already admire it. But what works on a theater stage is not always going to translate easily to the big screen, and I suspect that, as far as this adaptation's screenplay is concerned, Schumacher didn't even try.
The idea of molding this airy, obvious mass into something resembling a cohesive motion picture would be a whole lot harder than just filming a dozen rock videos and stringing them together. I suspect that most Phantom fans will walk out of this movie either mildly disappointed or outright pissed. Newcomers will leave the theater drowsy, confused and awestruck with the newfound knowledge that this is what all the hoopla's been about.
You want to "adapt" this show into something fresh, unique and worthy of my ten bucks? Hire David Fincher to direct it and let Trent Reznor adapt the score. That would signify the difference between an "adaptation" and a feature-length gothic rock video with the soul of Celine Dion.So if it's a literal adaptation of the stage play, then I'd contend that the stage play is a huge, purple bore of an evening. And if it's not a unique or compelling adaptation of the musical, then why not just stay home and listen to the CD instead? It takes a hell of a lot more than pretty curtains and glistening chandeliers to make an epic musical; this movie doesn't even come close.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=11360&reviewer=128
originally posted: 12/23/04 01:55:08
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USA
22-Dec-2004 (PG-13)
DVD: 03-May-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
26-Dec-2004
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