Review: The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

You know, you'd think something as unadulteratedingly over the top, theatrical and romanticized as Andrew Lloyd Webber's ABSURDLY popular musical The Phantom of the Opera would make a rather enjoyable cinematic experience. I mean, I've seen the Royal Albert Hall 30th Anniversary performance at least twice, and it's a good, solid play, with awesome songs, and a really good visual aesthetic.

Of course, this hope for a good movie out of a good play is completely dashed by Joel Schumacher's tacky, confusing, and generally disastrously inept attempt at cinematic adaptation.

It's clearly evident watching this that Schumacher thinks himself an artist, but his use of flash forwards (which are filmed in faux-grainy black and white for some bizarre reason), awkward camera movements and staging, and a generally haphazard pace that's both far too fast and far too slow provides ample evidence to the contrary. Instead, he concocts a confusing and disorderly mess that's far too over the top and kitschy for it's own good, while lacking any sense of subtly or sense of tact. Instead, he dials every story beat up to an eleven, while infusing the already complex (borderline labyrinthine) plot of the play with MORE subplots, namely a left field apparent Elektra complex on the part of the young waif (and subject of the Phantom's obsessions) Christine.

In the original play, it's implied that the Phantom has been watching Christine for perhaps six months or when we first meet them. That's creepy, yes, but in the film, Schumacher (who shares screenwriting credits with Lloyd Webber himself) instead has the Phantom lusting after Christine since she was a mere child of 8 years old, lending everything about their relationship a VERY disturbing, borderline pedophilia seeped overtone. Coupled with Christine's apparent belief that the Phantom is somehow the reincarnated/reborn spirit of her own father, and suddenly their relationship, which was already creepy in the play, just becomes downright disgusting and disturbing.

This would have been fine had the film played all this as the disturbing, deeply uncomfortable thing that it is, but instead, it romanticizes it to a ludicrous extent, making the duo out to be some sort of star-crossed pair, and frankly, it doesn't work at all.

This is only compounded by the casting, which is moderately serviceable at best, and flat out terrible at worst. A good example is Gerard Butler as the Phantom. Butler's singing voice is fine, albeit a rough, almost rocker styling to it. However, this completely clashes with the sprawling, hyper-romantic score, which is dominated by borderline orgasmic climaxes and plunging depths, along with several dozen notes that Butler, try as he might, is simply incapable of reaching. When compared to Michael Crawford's emotionally raw original, and the fact that Crawford's vocal range was (and still is) quite astounding, Butler pales.

In the case of Emmy Rossum as Christine, her voice is only fair, especially compared to Sarah Brightman's (the original Christine) angelic siren call. Several times, Rossum sounds like she's straining to hit the note, causing one's ears to shun the sounds, which completely undermines a play where the main character's specialty is to hit absurdly high notes with perfect grace.

I don't know what the rest of the characters are doing here. Patrick Wilson as Raoul feels weirdly miscast, and he just looks like a fop running around with long flowing locks and an upturned collar. In many ways, he looks like a hyper effete caricature of Franz Liszt here, a man who was far from effete. Miranda Richardson has nothing to do really, asides from slide around the edges of the frame and quickly spit out a backstory that recalls a paltry rip-off of The Elephant Man as a backstory, complete with evil carnies and mocking slum folk, a flashback that just serves to pad out the narrative, and do unnecessary (and confusing) changes to the original backstory from the play/novel. Minnie Driver hams it up as Carlotta, but in doing so, robs her of any charm we might get from hating her. She's just too hammy and cheesy to be taken anywhere near seriously, but at the same time, isn't self aware enough to surpass that and be a fun wink at the audience over the sheer noise of the production.

And finally, and this is really the most damming aspect of this film, the post-production dubbing and lip-syncing, a necessary evil in order to ensure the actor can focus on honing their performance in front of the camera, and then their vocals later, is flat out abominable. Several times it's PAINFULLY apparent that they are horribly out of sync, to borderline parodist levels that made me stratch my head in complete confusion. I've seen puppets with better lip syncing then this.

There's obviously a wealth of other problems, such as unnecessary plot lines, unnecessary changes to the already perfect lyrics, and set design that is far too cluttered, but really, that's more nitpicky elements best left to the devotee of the play, of which I am only a casual fan.

Suffice to say though, regardless, this film fails on almost every level, with bad acting, strained signing, and just generally being a messy, confusing, at times comically inept attempt to translate an enjoyable play into a film.

1 out of 5 stars.