In 1870 Paris, a mysterious masked Phantom (Gerard Butler) arranges for his protégée, Christine Daae (Emmy Rossum), to take over the lead at the opera. When Christine renews her relationship with the Viscomte Raoul de Chagny (Patrick Wilson), the Phantom vows revenge.
The Phantom of the Opera takes you back to another time. No, that time isn’t the 1870s, but the 1970s, when disco was in the air, and Europe was filled with the the simplistic tapping of cheap drum machines. Techno pop ruled the Eurovision Song Competition and ABBA was its master. Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my ABBA moments. Dancing Queen makes me smile and I’ve put on Knowing Me, Knowing You, (but only when no one would know so I could hide the shame). But ABBA is not great art, nor did it ever claim to be. It’s fun, lowest-common-denominated pop-rock for the masses; The Phantom of the Opera pretends to be of cultural significance (cultural significance with a drum machine). It is, but in the same way Jerry Lewis and Vanilla Ice are.
Worse still, it manages the reach the level of ABBA only on occasion (with the title tune which could have been a 1977 entry in Eurovision). The songs that aren’t mid-level techno sound adlibbed. The comedians on the TV series Who’s Line is it Anyway? created more memorable and emotional songs on the spur of the moment each week. As for the story, stripped of its horror elements, it is implausible at the best of times.
These problems are with the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in general. For any production of the work, stage or screen, it’s up to the director to salvage it with his own interpretation. Now, there’s a certain thrill in going to a live performance, which is magnified if the show is loud, colorful, and over-the-top. All the director needs to do is mask the weaknesses in that energy. But screen director Joel Schumacher had no such advantage. Schumacher, who successfully mixed teen isolationism, horror, and comedy in The Lost Boys and then floundered with the vacuous and surprisingly dull Batman Forever (1995) and its follow-up, Batman & Robin (1997), is in Batman mode here. Clearly he was given a nearly impossible task, but the best he could come up with was to toss it on the screen and try and make the sets look pretty. At least the lavish decor distracts from the songs. But for so much lushness, Schumacher rarely manages to make it look attractive. Many scenes are claustrophobic and have the charm of an over-stuffed antique store.
Color may be the film’s only real success. Often, backgrounds are reduced to a monochrome blue, (or reddish brown when under torchlight), setting off flesh, blood, roses, and lips, which are brightly colored. It’s a pleasing effect, wasted here.
The casting could have been better, but is a negligible problem when compared to the music and story. Emmy Rossum was an extremely good choice for Christine. She’s lovely, with a clear, strong voice, and she doesn’t embarrass herself when forced to recite the lines she’s given, proving she has star potential. Patrick Wilson doesn’t rise above the poorly written Viscomte Raoul de Chagny, nor does he drag it any further down. Gerard Butler is the weakest of the major players. His voice is too thin for the dramatic and romantic Phantom. Still, it is not as if a more talented singer could have rescued the film. Butler’s acting is lacking as well, but he has been adequate in other parts. The difficulty is the role. In Chaney’s 1925 version, The Phantom is a sad and sympathetic monster. Here, he’s just a jerk. It’s hard to portray a romantic jerk.
I’ve been writing about the film’s details as if they matter, and they don’t. It is the overblown whole which counts, and as a whole, it is tedious and pretentious. It’s what you’d expect your aunt Edith, who brings you pillows from roadside gift shops with “Florida, the alligator state” and “My Aunt went to Yuka flats and all I got was this stupid pillow” stenciled on them, and who has never listened to either a symphony or Led Zeppelin, would extol as deeply cultured. Much like those pillows, the musical, and this movie, are an embarrassment.
Gerard Butler stared in the passable Dracula 2000 (2000), the abysmal Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003), and the mind-numbing Timeline (2003).
Other film versions include: Lon Chaney’s silent version The Phantom of the Opera (1925), which was re-release in a cut version in 1929, Claude Rains’s The Phantom of the Opera (1943), the short, Spanish language El Fantasma de la ópera, the Hammer Horror The Phantom of the Opera (1962), the Maximilian Schell/Jane Seymour made for TV The Phantom of the Opera (1983), the Robert Englund’s Slasher The Phantom of the Opera (1989), the stage-bound musical The Phantom of the Opera (1990), the TV mini-series The Phantom of the Opera (1990), and director Dario Argento’s Il Fantasma dell’opera (1998).