The Phantom of the Opera (new movie version)

Cafe Society
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Ok so I watched this over the weekend.

I’m just going to write this review with the idea that you have seen the play so there may be spoilers. If you are just completly unfamilar with the story you may want to stop.

Basically I liked this movie just as much as I like the B’way play. How much do I like the B’way play? Well, I have mixed feelings about it. It has some of my favorite Andrew Lloyd Webber songs and some of my least favorite ones as well.

Christine was great. She was perfect for the role. I would marry Christine right now. You just fall in love with her during the movie.

Raoul is really good. He has a great singing voice and my only complaint about him is the same complaint I have for Meg. They both just have a very modern look to them and don’t really fit in well to a period piece.

Gerard Butler is really good a the Phantom. Fortunatley the movie version adds in some spoken dialogue through out the film and the Phantom gets to speak several lines rather than ‘sing’ them in the way the stage version does. This lets Mr. Butler act like the phantom. I think the Phantom’s first lines “Insolent boy etc” are the worst way to introduce the character but that is not Butler’s fault that ALW’s problem.

The film adds a little backstory to explain Madame Giry’s connection to the Phantom, that was well done. The film also adds more to the bookend of the auction of the Opera’s assets. That was done “ok” at best.

The sets are good but not great. Perhaps the fact that I’ve been to the real Paris Opera House spoils it for me. The costumes are great and through out the film the influence of Moulin Rouge can be felt in both the costumes and the editing. It is clear that they wanted to make the Masquarde number into their version of the Roxanne Tango number from Moulin Rouge but they didn’t quite do it.
And this bit I will put into a spoiler box.

The ultimate make up job for the Phantom sucked. Not nearly horrible enough. Really the ‘big reveals’ are the main challenge for a film because the big reveal in the silent version is so great and they basically blew it in this movie.

Now I have a weird question. I work for a hollywood studio and the studio that put out Phantom sent me a little ‘swag’ gift. It’s a charm bracelet. The charms are; A plaque with the title of the film, a chandelier, a mask, a rose, a monkey, a cactus, and a musical note. Wait, did I say a cactus? Yes, there is a cactus. Why is there a cactus?

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I fell in love wiht Emmy Rossum during Songcatcher.

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In line with this spoiler, Was anyone else really bugged that not only was the makeup not doing a great job distracting from Gerard Butler’s good looks, but it was impossible given the amount of his face we had seen already? I laughed out loud at that tiny little mask he had on in Point of No Return, figuring they hadn’t really left themselves any room, but I didn’t think they’d just ignore it! And we had already seen the (normal) skin all around the phantom’s right eye in his normal mask, so there’s a huge continuity problem when they do the reveal and skin we’ve already seen is all mottled and his eye misshapen. The wig I buy for the hair, but nobody’s that good with pancake makeup for the face. It seems like they started shooting before they had actually figured out what the phantom would look like w/out the mask.

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I enjoyed it greatly too, perhaps because I’ve never seen the Broadway version. I just didn’t think Butler’s singing voice was up to the job, frankly, although the others were fine (including Minnie Driver’s voiceover singer).

Don’t remember a cactus - sure it isn’t a candelabra?

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I think you’re right. It is supposed to be a candelabra but it sure looks like a cactus.

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I liked the movie, overall.

As previously stated, Christine was fantastic. Her voice was so perfect - I loved it.

The Phantom, on the other hand…the singing was not good. You can tell Butler has a decent voice, but he sang everything like a Backstreet Boy.

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Peper Mill and I got a chance to see The Phantom of the OPera over the Christmas break. I grew up watching various versions of TPOTO, especially Chaney’s 1925 version. Pepper has seen the play three times (including once when Michael Crawford starred), so it was something we really wanted to do.

Our judgment: we loved it, for the most part. Theyt managed to be true to the musical, they sets and art design were gorgeous, and we loved the performances.

Our reservations:

1.) We hated the Phantom’s singing voice. You didn’t have to have Michael Crawford, but you did need someone who sang the part well. This Phantom looked good, and his speaking parts were fine, but they needed someone else to sing it.

2.) The Phantom’s makeup was disappointing. I said that he looked like he had a bad case of sunburn, but Pepper thought it might be third-degree burns. It’s irrelevcant, in any case – in Leroux’s book and the fist film, the Phantom was born that way – and he was spposed to be hideous, “a living skeleton”, or else the whole issue of his being cast out by Society makes no sense. as it is, you couldn’t imagine anyone paying to see him in a Freak Show (as shown in the flashback).

3.) Why the heck did they suck all the color out of the Bal Masque sequence? They rendered the wole thing in the sort of computer-crunched yellow that they’d used for O Brother, Where art Thou?, which had the effect of making everything look like a yellowed black and white photo. Yet the song “Masquerade” that they’re singing is telling you about the bright and exotic colors everyone is wearing! And in the 1929 re-release of the silent film, this segment is the one they singled out to be shot is vibrant two-strip Technicolor! Striking reds and dark greens, and everyone’s skin looks flesh-toned, instead of the dead gray of he rest of the movie. The Phantom in that old version is a blaze of red as The Red Death. In the new one, he’s got a scrap od red woven around him. We thus have th ludicrous situation where the 1929 version is brighter and infinitely more colorful that the 2004 version, which explicitly proclaims its bright colors!

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  1. I agree that the Phantom may have had the worst singing voice in the movie. I mean, great guy, great actor, and a competent singer… but in comparison with the other very talented singers, he just doesn’t cut it.

  2. I could understand the shift in makeup. Part of the whole point of the Andrew Lloyd Webber version has to do with the sexual tension between Christine and the Phantom, and this works very well with that little half-mask being worn by the very masculine and suave Gerard Butler… but when you read the book, you find yourself wondering just why Christine DOES stick with this creepy skeletonoid musical sewer monster guy…

  3. The only reason I could think of for having everyone in yellow/silver/white/black during the “Masquerade” sequence was so that Christine, Raul, and especially the Phantom would stand out amidst the crowd, regardless of the angle from which you were shooting.

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Oh, yeah – one other thing:

4.) It’s annoying that characters are, for no good reason, speaking some of the lines that are sung in the show. Why for?

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Copy/pasting from the post I made to my Livejournal after seeing the movie:

Andrew Lloyd Webber is a lazy hack anyway, and when you tack that onto a crap director like Joel Schumacher, plus three lead actors who can’t, you know, ACT, you get an enormous floater of a film.

So bad that Mama and my brother, with whom I went, had to bite our fists to keep from laughing during about six scenes.

Like when the Phantom goes back to his little underground lair, all right, and he’s mopey and blue because Christine left him, and so what does he do? He starts crying and singing to a toy monkey. A TOY MONKEY, people. It is pathetic. And then of course you have the horrible editing, especially during the dances and the (random-ass) swordfight at the cemetery, which brings me to my next point, being:

When you only have one better-than-mediocre song in a show, let your lead actor sing the damn song.

The editing and staging of “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” was tragic. That is a song which requires absolutely zero camera tricks or editing or even movement from the actor. She stands or sits in front of the grave and sings. Do not play around with pretty angel statues or have her walking through gazillions of rows of snowy cemetery. Plunk her in front of the grave. Roll the cameras. Have her sing the song. That is all that is necessary, here.

That said, I did enjoy three things about the movie: the Girys, La Carlotta, and the managers. I can’t remember their names, so we’re going to go with Statler and Waldorf. Their timing was good, and they were just this side of too much, which considering that the rest of the movie was way the hell over in SchumacherLand, was a relief. La Carlotta wasn’t too much, but La Carlotta cannot be too much. La Carlotta was perfect, because Minnie Driver had a clue about what she was doing. And Miranda Richardson as Mme. Giry, and a very pretty little blonde as Meg Giry, were sweet and neat, and easy on the eyes. Both of them also had vague clues about stuff like acting and nuance, because the rest of the cast was BEATING THEIR LINES INTO YOU WITH A BROAD HAMMER.

I will not go into the craptasticness that was the Phantom’s raspy rock star shouting – oh, wait, I mean “singing.” Nor will I go into the bizarre scene where Raoul, who has a noose around his neck, and the Phantom, who was holding it there, both sing a (typical ALW, meaning schmaltzy and loud – oh, look, parallel thirds! How clever! Minor chord progressions! How dear!) duet and swing their heads around in unison to look at Christine. Christine, who is standing just at the edge of the lake, looking as if she would like to surge forth into the lake and save her fiance from certain death, but the water goes all the way up to her knees and she doesn’t want to ruin her white dress.

…Nor will I go into that other bizarre scene where the Phantom has killed her co-star and gone on in his place, and she realized it, and tries to signal Raoul through widening her eyes and jerking her head around that “hey, Phantom over here!” (Rather, as my brother put it, “Psst! The antom-phay is on age-stay!”)

Anyway, it was the perfect movie to gripe about for two hours afterward, which is of course what we did, being my family. So if you want a very pretty movie to snark on, sing along with, and yes, play air organ to, I do recommend a matinee. Although see if you can buy a ticket to another movie, like Lemony Snicket, and go to Phantom instead, because Andrew Lloyd Webber is too much of a hack to deserve your money.

…

SONDHEIM RULES!

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During that song I just closed my eyes and listened.
I personally enjoyed having some spoken lines rather than the stupid ‘sung’ versions. Most of those lines are in a really inappropriate sing-songy tune anyway. Like when the Phantom sings, Come those fools who run my theatre will be missing you. This is not how you end that scene.

I’m glad the Mdme Giry did not play like Frau Bluckher in Young Frankenstein, like I’ve seen some women play her on B’way.

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Tracy, you knew you were going to hate it going in. So why did you bother?

I mean, you hate the composer, you hate the director, you hate the actors. So really, why subject yourself to such torment?

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So I could know what I was talking about when I griped about it. :slight_smile:

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Addendum: I didn’t know I was going to hate the actors going in, you know. And except for the three leads, I liked the cast.

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Actually, there were a couple times when I thought the singing was unnecessary. I saw the play years ago and remember it only vaguely, but I assumed it done basically the same as the play. They probably changed it so that people like me who don’t remember the play and aren’t big musical theater people don’t think, “Why are they singing this part?”

Overall, I guess I liked the movie as much as I probably could have, given that I already thought the music was very over-dramatic and ridiculous. The really long scene with Christine walking through the cemetery dragged unbearably, as did some other scenes, I think. But I did enjoy the movie. And now I have the entire soundtrack playing in my mind, all the time. Mostly, I’m glad that since Chicago, movie musicals seem to be slowly coming back.

Yup. No argument there. I’m trying to imagine what POTO would be like if he’d written it, but my mind simply won’t go there.

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Haven’t seen it yet, but want to, for two main reasons:

  1. The movie will give much greater scope for grand, sweeping scenes that just couldn’t be done on any realistic stage

  2. The music, through a theatrical Dolby system with huge speakers, will have to be great. Phantom just doesn’t seem right without a thundering theatre organ with ground-shaking bass notes, and those are just too few and far between on stages these days. And no matter how good they are, synthesized pipe organs just don’t cut it for me.

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Don’t have particularly strong feelings about the film myself, but whether you loved it or hated it you’ll probably be amused by this:

<a href=http://www.livejournal.com/community/m15m/6231.html?#cutid1>The Phantom of the Opera in 15 Minutes</a> by <a href=http://www.livejournal.com/users/cleolinda/>Cleolinda</a>.

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Well, I came in here just to have one question answered, and several of you have answered it: Was it just me, or did the Phantom have a lousy voice?

I’ve seen the play, but haven’t seen the movie yet. I did see the preview for it the other day, and was shocked that the lead in a musical had a voice that I would characterize as barely adequate voice. I wasn’t that impressed with the lead female’s voice either, but I didn’t hear enough to feel that it was all that bad.

What were they thinking when they cast this? It’s not like they were casting a box office draw (a la Brad Pitt) and accepting that he didn’t have a voice; I haven’t even heard about this guy otherwise.

Very strange.

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Hey, it coulda been worse. A couple of years ago, I heard a rumor that the Phantom would be played and sung by…

John Travolta.
:dubious:

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Gerard Butler is a local actor, and I’ve seen him in probably two dozen productions. He’s always, always, without exception, fantastic. So why was he so not-fantastic in this? I mean, I don’t think we was terrible, but he wasn’t…I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

Overall, I very much enjoyed it. Lots of nostalgia for me, seeing the swan boat (although here it was the bed), the monkey music box and other stage elements still intact. (I was in high school when *Phantom *was on stage. I was a theater and choir geek. You do the math.) I felt 15 again, sitting in the theater with my mom. I actually started crying at the overture. She was bawling through “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again.”

But I think many of the criticisms here are valid. The makeup was not well planned or executed. I was horribly disappointed in the staging and filming of “Masquerade.” In addition to Glorious Technicolor, I wanted swirling and chaos and breathtaking swoopy camerawork. I wanted the dance scene from Much Ado About Nothing, only moreso.

Really? I mean, yes I agree that the makeup wasn’t hideous enough, but I coulda swore that Erik was burned with acid or something as an infant. No? What am I thinking of, then? It has been over 15 years since I read it.

But yeah. When Josef Buquet has the lines “Like yellow parchment is his skin - a great black hole serves as the nose that never grew” I want a noseless yellow skinned flakey dude. C’mon guys, use that CGI movie-making magic or keep it on the stage!