Recent News

'Phantom of the Opera' an overstuffed spectacle
By Amy Longsdorf
Special to The Morning Call
May 5, 2005
"Andrew Lloyd Webber's ''The Phantom of the Opera'' (2004, Warner, PG-13,
$30 ) gets the screen treatment it deserves, complete with chaotic
storytelling, dizzying camera work and a cast smothered by all that brocade
finery.
The action is set in the late 1800s and revolves around a masked man (Gerard
Butler) who lives in the catacombs underneath the Paris Opera House,
seemingly so he can be closer to a young soprano (Emmy Rossum) who
mistakenly believes he is her father.
Under Joel Schumacher's atrocious direction, the movie is an off-key
symphony of sung-through dialogue, lifeless performances and about a dozen
songs that all sound exactly the same."

HomeTheaterinfo.com
"With few notable exceptions the cast does little to hold the attention of
the audience. Gerard Butler as the Phantom does not have the deep,
entrancing voice of Michael Crawford, who originated the role on Broadway.
... The fantastic reveal in the 1925 silent classic when Chaney rips off the
mask to uncover a hideous mockery of a human face is not the same when
half the face is a chiseled look of a male model.  The mask is little more than
 fashion accessory.  There is a complete lack of any foreboding here;
the audience never has a sense of Christine being in any danger."

MovieCityNews.com
"After Andrew Lloyd Webber's staggeringly popular musical adaptation of
The Phantom of Opera first made the theatrical leap from London to
Broadway,  it became something of a Hollywood ritual for the agents
 of A-list actors and directors to float their clients' names as candidates for
the inevitable film version.  They needn't have bothered.
What must have seemed like a no-brainer 17 years ago, however, proved
to be anything but a runaway success upon its awards-qualifier run
on Dec. 20, 2004. 
In what must have been a devastating surprise to everyone involved
 .... fans stayed away in droves, as if their unhappiness over the absence of
Michael Crawford had manifest itself in an international box-office boycott."

Movie review by John W. Bowen, Rue Morgue Magazine
Rating:  ROTTEN
"...On the other hand, while Gerard Butler lays on the anguish convincingly
 as the titular boogeyman, he's about as threatening as David Cassidy
 and can't sing worth dog ****."

nickschager.com
"...Schumacher, a filmmaker without a subtle instinct in his body, works
overtime to drench his film in ornamentation, yet with the exception of his
staging of "Masquerade," the film - a big, splashy sea of gold ruffles,
feathers, flowers and candles - quickly drowns in opulence overload. It's
true that Weber's grandiose Phantom lends itself to such extravagance, but
the director's visual lavishness is chintzy when it should be luxurious,
suffocating when it should be alluring. Vainly attempting to amplify the
play's sexuality, Schumacher has his blandly handsome Phantom (Gerard
Butler) bellow and pout like a childish maniac."

FilmForce.com
"While not a big Andrew Lloyd Webber fan (don't get me started on Cats), I do
enjoy a fair chunk of the music from Phantom of the Opera.  Don't ask me why.
Still, the lavish theatrical adaptation of Phantom (Warner Bros., Rated
PG-13, DVD-$27.95 SRP) managed to make me despise even the songs I liked.
There's absolutely no charm in this film - it's all over-the-top style,
sound and fury signifying nothing.  Oh, it was directed by Joel Schumacher.
That explains it.  As far as bonus features go, all you get is the trailer."

      Handsome, but flawed 'Phantom' arrives on DVD
      Thursday, May 05, 2005
      By RAY KELL
      The Republican
    "Not since Julie Andrews was passed over for Audrey Hepburn in the
movie version of "My Fair Lady," has the gap between Broadway
 and Hollywood been more apparent than in the film version of
Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera."
      Forty years after the Andrews slight, Hollywood chose pretty boy
Gerard Butler over Tony Award winner Michael Crawford, who starred
 in the London and New York productions of the Webber blockbuster.
      The film, which arrives on home video this week, was a disappointment
at the box office. It cost $55 million to produce and grossed $50 million
domestically - a fraction of the $170 million taken in by the Oscar-winning
musical "Chicago" two years earlier."

DVD Talk
"The other big concern of the Phantom… devotees was the casting
of the Phantom himself. This, unfortunately, is one of Schumacher's
bigger mistakes in the film. He casts Gerard Butler in the famous role and,
 although at times he seems a capable actor, Butler simply cannot match
the power and vocal range of his counterparts. He is overshadowed in every
single scene with the Emmy Rossum. His voice just isn't quite good enough
to match up with her. I understand that Schumacher wanted him to play
 a more rugged, less trained, and less "angelic" Phantom, but it sometimes
 becomes distracting how much better of a vocalist Rossum is than Butler.
 His ruggedness does, however, make him a more believable attraction
 for Christine. Still, the casting of Butler in the role of the Phantom is
 easily one of the larger missteps taken by Schumacher."

And a review from Todd H. Newsgroups....
Talk about telling it like it REALLY is.....

Suzy McKee Charnas "Phantom of the Opera" Fim Review
"I put it to you that the intensity of the Phantom's obsession with pretty,
 pliable Christine grows from his awareness of his own age, of this talented
young singer as his one and only, his last chance at love, sex, and the simple
 warmth of human companionship before his own approaching, inevitable
 decline. His fixation on her is the desperation of the mature-to-middle-aged
 man facing the prospect of his own mortality, sighting the approach of the
 winding down toward death of a life so crippled as to have barely
 manifested in the world at all.
At this stage of his miserable life he doesn't just love Christine; he needs her,
 desperately. And the cause of his jealousy is his knowledge that he can't rival
Raoul's easy, sunny, above all youthful vitality. But his weapon is the
attractiveness not of the young stud, but of the mature man seasoned by the
 lessons of experience (and the self-knowledge that they bring), an intense and
 masterful man who has earned his authority by a lifetime of adventure,
 struggle, and survival against great odds.
His unwilling realization that it would be truly monstrous to doom his
 beloved Christine to a life with him leads him, finally, to let her go with
 her younger lover. At heart, he wants his beloved to have more of a life
than being shackled, a few years hence, to an aging, ailing, monstrous and
neurotic criminal with a terrible temper (childishly as the Phantom often
behaves, he also demonstrates intelligent self-awareness). So, against all
expectation and with a convulsive and racking effort, he does the decent thing
— he lets her go. It's a breathtaking gesture, and, quite properly, it breaks
our hearts.
This resolution (in more than one sense of the word) isn't just about how
breaking up is hard to do, like an episode of "Orange County". It's a cruelly
 maimed adult's large-spirited sacrifice of the one miraculous hope in a frightful
 life. His gesture hits us so hard because it demonstrates that inside the
 murderous monster a human being of great heart survives, suffers, and responds
 to the smallest gesture of love — a human being of much larger compass and
personal honor than Raoul will ever be. That is the pathos of the Phantom's
renunciation — and the reason that we come away thinking that Christine chose
 the lesser man, warts (to say the least of it!) and all.
...On-screen this delicious combination of emotional goodies, which helped
power the stage show to its vast success, has been thrown away.
What replaces it? Soap-opera shenanigans among Schumacher's young and
 pretty folks. This can of course be interesting, particularly to those still in the
 throes of the youthful mating dance, but it has nothing like the mythic power
of "Beauty and the Beast" (in which the Beast is a contemporary of Beauty's
 father, not of Beauty), or Zeus and his many young lovers among mortal
women, or middle-aged Mr. Rochester and youthful Jane, or Othello and
Desdemona, etc. etc. etc. The movie cynically betrays the power of this story,
 and of the stage musical built upon it, by choosing instead to be an
action-packed costume drama of virile young rivals in love, dueling
(literally) for the heart of a brainless ingenue.
Not surprisingly, the result is not worth the bother."

This review is long, but it is FANTASTIC. 
No one has said it better that we have found, it covers it ALL.
THANK YOU FILMTRACKS!!!
Click here for the ultimate review!! Filmtracks.com
Here are some highlights... but there was so much to work with!
"A very vocal campaign to retain Crawford was undertaken by devoted fans of
The Phantom of the Opera, with ads in magazines leading to thousands of
signatures and petitions to Webber.
The choice of Butler in the title role was met with immediate skepticism by
devoted fans and the general public alike, for the actor, known more for
his dashing looks than anything else, had no formal training as a vocalist.
What Webber certainly didn't want to hear, however, was the absolute pounding
that critics immediately leveled on the film in its pre-release screenings. Response
across the board was both consistent and savage, with most of the critics aiming
their disdain and shock over the film in the direction of Gerard Butler as the Phantom.
Butler's lack of formal vocal training is blindingly obvious, with the man shouting
his role rather than singing it. He cannot hold notes worth a damn, and the entire
demeanor of his voice is wrong for the role. The Phantom was both mysterious
and romantic. There was something overpowering and seductive about his voice,
as captured perfectly by Michael Crawford.
If you have never heard the original cast recording, you may find this new version
 of The Phantom of the Opera to be somewhat of an average musical. But if
you're a fan of the original, and you, like most of the world in the 80's and 90's,
 went to see the production in a major venue, then the film recordings will either
make you bleed at the ears or shock you into a state of stunned semi-consciousness.
The choice of Butler as the Phantom is clearly the stake in the heart of this
production, and if Michael Crawford had indeed returned for this production,
his magical voice alone would have made the whole endeavor worthwhile.
The music of the night is not only over now, but it left a cold, foul stink in the room."

The Boston Globe takes a few more swipes...
Restored 'Donkey Skin' is a magical, masterful musical
The Boston Globe 12/14/05
"Anyone who still needs to be convinced of everything that's wrong with the
artless, soulless floor show that is Joel Schumacher's "The Phantom of the Opera"
should just spend a little time with "Donkey Skin."
...And compared to the latest "Phantom," it's practically a primer on how to
rework a literary classic into an impressively restrained movie with something
fresh and intelligent to say.
...The happily-ever-after ending is suitably kooky, if parts of it feel a little too
abrupt and tacked on. The problem with any ending is that most of us just hate
to leave Demy's world -- where even the costumes have personalities -- for more
of the "Phantom" filmmaking that we know awaits us in the 21st century."

You know you're in trouble when....  ;)

'Sports Illustrated' even chimes in on the film.
January 17th issue -  "Who's Hot - Who's Not" 
"Masks" 
(Headshots of Lebron James (NBA basketball player) and Gerard Butlers' Phantom.)
 "Who's Not"
"As for the Phantom, no, he's not showing support for the
NHL (hockey) players; if you had the box-office returns
he's getting for his film, you'd be hiding, too."

The Commercial Appeal - Memphis
"If Lon Chaney's silent "opera ghost" represented a terrifying avatar of
the uncanny, schlockmeister Joel Schumacher's musical Phantom is a
prisoner of kitsch -- a victim not of society's cruelty but of Andrew Lloyd
 Webber's  Rick Wakeman organ chords, "99 Luftballoons" synth beats
and nuance-free lyrics ("Christine, I loooove you").
Emmy Rossum is charming as the object of the title chandelier dropper's
 lovesickness, but the Phantom (Gerard Butler) inspires neither sympathy
 nor fright; he calls himself a "loathsome gargoyle," but unmasked he looks
more like a guy with a seafood allergy. Schumacher smothers the sets in
pink roses, but this long-awaited adaptation of the smash stage
production remains a stinker."

Joel Schumacher on Gerard Butler:
"Then when he came in to audition he blew me and Andrew Lloyd Webber
away.  He’s going to be a great Phantom - a young, sexy Phantom.
And I know the Michael Crawford fans are going to be hysterical, but
maybe they should stay home then..."
moviehole 05/22/03

(On the following review, what we want to know Gerry....
Is WHY if you were "filling the master's shoes," did you not bring
ONE bit of the original interpretation to your performance
that won him a TONY AWARD??)
365gay.com
"Now, a year later, “The Phantom” movie completed, Butler, of Scottish decent,
replete with the accent, is happy to reveal what it is like to be cast in the spotlight
and put under such a strong microscope. “I mean, I am competing or filling the
master’s shoes,” he chuckles, referring to the person who started it all in London
 and on Broadway, Michael Crawford. “And quite honestly,” adds Butler,
“I think Crawford would have been cast in the movie if he was not now sixty-five years old.”"

Michael Crawford's Rave Reviews as the Phantom

Christine Daae's
Just a Handful of the Many Reasons
Not To Respect Andrew Lloyd Webber

From the Hartford Courant
"It's not about the chandelier anymore.
That's the goods news for Joel Schumacher's film version of
"Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera."
The bad news is that it's not about anything else, except perhaps
composer Lloyd Webber, whose name is imposed in the film's title
 and whose every gilt-embossed note is sumptuously
overwrought - yet undersung.
But it is barely rethought as a film and the main new touches are
all wrong - a Phantom who can't sing and a Christine who can't act.
One can imagine Harold Prince, who directed the original
stage production, being livid with so much of his signature
theatrical imprint lifted for the film - and executed so badly.
When the lit candelabras emerge from the mist as the Phantom
takes Christine on a gondola ride to his subterranean liar,
it's magical on stage. In the realistic realm of film,
we're more interested in figuring out how the wicks stay lit
underwater as he glides to his Bat Cave pad, which looks like
it's decorated from a clearance sale at ABC Furnishings.
On stage when the Phantom emerges for the first time from
 Christine's mirror, it's a great coup de theatre. On screen,
however, it's just hokey.
The "Masquerade" number also echoes the stage version, down to
the staircase gavotte, but now the Phantom is dressed not in a
terrifying death mask but as one lifted from the "Pirates of the
 Caribbean," more silly than terrifying.
In Prince's production, the Phantom is elegant and dangerous.
 (Fans still speak of Michael Crawford's marvelously expressive hands.
Banderas also has that sensual delicacy and would have made a far
different impression on film.) It's easy to see how Christine becomes
transfixed with such a mature and alluring spirit compared to the
callow youth of her other suitor, Raoul.
In the film, the roles are reversed. The Phantom is played by 33-year-old
Gerald Butler as a youthful hunk with great hair. Sure he has a mask but
it's a rather modest one covering a not-all-that-bad disfigurement. (All
the guy really needs is an episode of "The Swan.") Now it's Raoul who
looks older, and not so dashing, with a stringy, French mullet of a wig
 (and an inability not to notice the difference between a 300-pound
tenor and his nemesis on stage with his gal). The film adds a swordfight
scene but it merely reduces the rivals to overheated jocks with the
Phantom diminished to action anti-hero, just another guy with a saber."

FLAT NOTE Rossum and Butler in the bland Phantom
Entertainment Weekly C+
"There's a moment in The Phantom of the Opera that achieves a morbid
kitsch splendor that the rest of the movie could have used more of. The
Phantom (Gerard Butler), in his cape and cravat, his glossy white mask and
Strangelovian gloves, is leading Christine (Emmy Rossum), the teenage chorus
girl-turned-diva who's his secret objet d'amour, down a catacomb lined with
candelabra that are held aloft by human arms. It's an image lifted right out
of Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast - but what the heck, at least the director,
Joel Schumacher, is stealing from the best.
...It takes a certain fearlessness to craft a line that grandiose, but it would be
 sheer snobbery to deny that the song, with its blast of old-dark-castle organ,
 insinuates its corniness. For a moment, the Phantom is right where he should
be: inside your mind. The rest of the time, he's in the world's most
lavish furniture showroom.
...The Scottish actor Gerard Butler, by contrast, exudes little charisma
beneath his mask, and he sings like a Meat Loaf stuffed with too much garlic.
He's too roaringly ''overpowering'' in the Broadway manner to invite us into
 the Phantom's exquisite torment. It scarcely matters how much schlock-rock
 eloquence the Phantom musters to salute ''the music of the night'':
If he fails to break our hearts, then this story can't take wing."

You gotta hand it to actors daring enough to actually sing onscreen,
but then again ...
Seattlepi.com
"A musical heavyweight was needed to carry this long-gestated adaptation
 of the Broadway classic, yet even Antonio Banderas (oh, sure) and
John Travolta (what?) once danced around taking the role of the Phantom.
...Butler, whose only musical background was singing for his own garage band,
milks all the hushed whispers within reach to cover up his limited vocal skill.
...Butler swaggers admiringly, but this number proves he's a lightweight.
GRADE: C"

The combination of underwhelming filmmaking and gross
overacting produces an inadvertently and simultaneously
 hilarious and soporific effect without parallel.
Cleveland.com
"While the film itself is stultifying -- and the sets, costumes and
choreography make the proceedings look like the business end of a gloomy,
faux-Gothic S&M parlor -- the actors are laughable poseurs who perform the
authors' stupid human tricks on command.
...Brooding Scotsman Gerard Butler also has a magically perfect coif, though
his Brylcreem suddenly loses its mysterious holding power when his mask gets
ripped off. Bad face day and bad hair day.
...Those of us in the movie theater who could muster the energy giggled, but
quietly. Our slumbering neighbors looked so peaceful snoring away amid the
din of the music of the nightmare."

'Phantom' is quite a sight
News Observer - Raleigh-Durham, NC
"You'd think able singing would be a given in a movie musical. Not here.
The title role is sung gruffly and colorlessly by Gerard Butler (the titular
 vampire in "Dracula 2000"), leading one to wonder why Christine finds
him so mesmerizing and mistakes him for the angel of music that her
father had promised to send her upon his death. His facial disfigurement
is also laughably mild. Even "Extreme Makeover" would balk at such
 minor flaws.
Worse yet, Butler's Phantom has apparently passed along his musical failings
 to his protegee, Christine. Opera-trained teen actress Emmy Rossum is too
 weak and tinny in the upper registers to be convincing as the new audience
 darling of the Paris Opera. But she's earnest and beautiful, with doe eyes
that convey her emotions when the script doesn't. Such moments are
 rare, however.
 By adhering so slavishly to the play script, Lloyd Webber and Schumacher
 fail to take advantage of film's ability to capture intimate moments of
contemplation and connection. Many minutes are wasted with characters
chattering song lyrics instead of revealing themselves in a meaningful way.
...If this is all Lloyd Webber could come up with for his Phantom's
Hollywood coming-out party, he should have left his ghoulish icon
 in its natural habitat: the theater."

Eric D. Snider Review
"Those of us who love musicals will not be thrilled with the new
big-screen  version of "The Phantom of the Opera" -- not because
it's a terrible film (though it is), but because of the bad name it gives
movie musicals. "Chicago" revived the genre and brought in audiences
consisting largely of people for whom musicals aren't usually their "thing."
 Some of those people, having been eased into the genre by the swinging
razzle-dazzle of "Chicago," might wander into "Phantom," too, only
to be numbed, annoyed and confused. "See?!" they'll say as they
 stagger out of the film 143 minutes later. "I told you I didn't like musicals!"
Which is a shame, because on stage, "Phantom" is a good way of
 introducing people to the art of the musical. Andrew Lloyd Webber
 and Tim Rice's lavish spectacle has catchy tunes and is not overly
complicated or intellectual. It is accessible and ordinary, and since it
 is almost entirely sung (with very little dialogue), there are none of those
 awkward "they were just talking, then all of a sudden they started singing"
 transitions that can be so off-putting to newbies.
Nearly everything that is good about the stage version is lost in the movie
 version, which was adapted by Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher
and directed by Schumacher. The man has directed good films, including
"Phone Booth" and "Tigerland," but when he directs bad ones,
he directs the hell out of them. I'm thinking of the loud bombast of
"Batman & Robin," or the braying idiocy of "Bad Company." All of his
worst impulses  -- from bad casting to bad camera angles -- are brought
to bear in "Phantom."
Take, for example, the role of the Phantom himself, the mad, disfigured
 genius who lives beneath the Opera Populaire in 1870s Paris, where the
 story is set. Schumacher has cast Gerard Butler, bland star of such loud,
 dumb films as "Dracula 2000," "Timeline," "Reign of Fire" and "Lara Croft
Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life." Where in all of that did Schumacher
 see in Butler the potential to play a sensitive, wounded man who obsesses
 over a singer?
Butler's singing voice is too lightweight for a man with as much built-up
passion and anger as the Phantom. It is not an especially good voice, either,
growling some of the lower notes and sounding far too modern and
pop-ish for a character whose only musical influences have been opera.
 (Wouldn't a man who lived under an operahouse sing more like Pavarotti
 and less like Michael Bolton?)
Butler may have been cast because he is handsome -- which is actually
 a liability for this role, since the Phantom is supposed to be disfigured to
 the point of being shunned by all society. The way Schumacher and his
makeup artists have rendered him, the Phantom has three-fourths of a
perfectly good, enviably attractive face, marred only by what appears
to be a burn scar around his right eye.
...A Phantom who can't sing and who isn't even hideous, other characters
 who sing with great enthusiasm yet who do not match it with their faces
 -- it's as though Schumacher hates musicals and is trying to sabotage every
 musical element of the film.
...Some of my colleagues have said that a director as shallow as Schumacher
is the perfect fit for a musical as shallow as "Phantom of the Opera,"
but I think the finished product proves otherwise. On stage, "Phantom"
can be a pleasure, even if it is a guilty one. On screen, what passion and
excitement there is in the work has been sucked out; it has become boring,
which is something the stage version could never be accused of. It is shallow,
 yes, but even shallow works need competent directors. Grade: D+"

PALE PLOT, WEAK SONGS HAUNT 'PHANTOM' FILM ;
CHANDELIER OUTSHINES CAST AND POSING
BY HANDSOME LEAD ACTOR
Richmond Times-Dispatch
"It's gotta be the chandelier.
Since it opened in 1988, the Broadway show "The Phantom of
the Opera" has attracted more than 10 million patrons to more
 than 7,000 shows, and it is still selling out almost every night.
Now that the second-longest running musical of all time
(behind "Cats") has been brought to the big screen, those of
us who are not part of the legion of 10 million finally have
a chance to see what the fuss is about.
It's gotta be the chandelier. As surely everyone must know by
now, at a climactic moment  the chandelier falls toward the
audience and everyone gets scared.
It certainly can't be the music, or the lyrics, or the teensy little
story stretched out beyond two hours. And in the movie version, at
least, it isn't in the quality of the singing or the direction or the script.
The sets look nice. Ridiculously lavish and over the top, of course, but nice.
...Emmy Rossum, who has a pleasant enough voice for a musical
 but couldn't possibly sing an opera, stars as Christine, who sings opera.
As the Phantom, Gerald Butler can't even sing in a musical and
 was presumably chosen for his looks alone.
And choosing a singer for his looks rather than his voice is definitely
a possibility for Joel Schumacher, who does nothing here to refute his
 reputation as the worst director in America. The emphasis of his work
is almost entirely visual, and he will gladly sacrifice narrative cohesion
for the sake of a shot that looks good.
Plus, he should know better than to steal the idea of arms-holding-candelabra
sconces from Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast," or the hall-of-mirrors
 scene from "The Lady From Shanghai."
If he is going to commit cinematic theft, he should take something less famous.
One of the defining moments in all of movie history came in the 1925 version
of the same story, when Lon Chaney rips off his mask. The excitement
and drama of that scene are never even approached in this version.
...If you get bored and distracted by this new film, and you will,
you might want to count how many times Hart and Stilgoe have
characters sing the name Christine. Fortunately, they never try to
 rhyme it. Their record of easy rhymes remains pristine."

"This guy's not the Phantom of the Opera,
 he's the Fashionably Scarred Stud of the Opera and that just doesn't work."
Richard Roeper, EBERT & ROEPER

The Age
"Throughout the decade when the film of Phantom didn't happen, fans were
increasingly disturbed by rumours about the casting. Michael Crawford, the
definitive Phantom, is now 62, but there were demonstrations outside Warners
by devotees determined that no other contender - John Travolta one year,
Antonio Banderas the next - should take the role that was rightfully his.
Back at the studio, however, no decisions were being made on Phantom at all.
Nobody on the inside was pushing it. Lloyd Webber himself has related how a
Warners representative told him that while he got the idea of people singing
inside an opera house, he couldn't see why they would sing on the roof. "And
I thought, 'It's a musical!'" It was this that persuaded him that he should
try, somehow, to buy the rights back and make the film under his own steam.
With Schumacher once again on board, any suggestion that Michael Crawford
could reprise his stage success was forgotten. Schumacher loves glamour,
youth and "sexiness", a word he uses frequently. "I said I'd do it, but
they'd have to all be very young and beautiful and really sexy and really
gifted. I wasn't going to do a middle-aged Phantom."
The two leading men are considerably older - Patrick Wilson, who plays the
Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, is rather long in the tooth at 31 to have been
Christine's childhood sweetheart, while Gerard Butler's Phantom is now 35.
Butler is, as the agitators might say, no Michael Crawford, but his wavering
adherence to the upper reaches of Lloyd Webber's melodies is outweighed by
exactly the sort of masculine sexuality Schumacher wanted.
There is resentment, too, that a story full of Freudian potential has been
watered down to no more than another soft-rock meeting in the candy store.
"The guignol is alchemised into syrup, creating a film so lifeless and
soulless it's almost scary," wrote one critic."

James Rocchi,Netflix
"I'm probably not the best guy to review The Phantom of the
 Opera.  And not because I hate musicals -- because I love them.
I'm a sucker for Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein and all the
 classics, the ones in which the musical numbers have almost no
real reason to be in the story and the only purpose of the enterprise
is to entertain. But after doing adequate work on such musicals as
 "Jesus Christ Superstar," Lloyd Webber created a type of musical
spectacle in which scenery and technical materials are more important
than the songs or the story. 
...The Phantom of the Opera is directed by Joel Schumacher, who's
given us such bad films as Flawless, Batman and Robin and
Phone Booth; there may be more mediocre directors in Hollywood
than Schumacher, but they're not given as much money or as many
opportunities to do bad work as he is. In many ways, Schumacher and
Lloyd Webber are a perfect match: Both are peddlers of big-money,
 small-quality spectacle. They may deserve each other, but we don't.
...As for The Phantom, Butler's voice can charitably be described
 as a mile wide and an inch thick. His weak baritone skips over the
 surface of the notes without giving them the rounded depth that a real
singer could provide where it's so desperately needed
-- putting a gloss on the cheap, lumbering, shabby construction
of Lloyd Webber's song craft.
...Phantom, the movie, is an expansion of that crass aim that lowers the
 entrance fee: A bad night at the movies costs a lot less than a bad night
 at the theatre. Just remember, paying a lower price for something
 bad is no bargain any way you slice it."

No wonder he wears a mask
www.newsday.com
"The history of the Broadway musical on film is a potholed trail
 strewn with butchered scores, songs patched in from other shows,
frantically edited dance numbers, movie stars who can't sing,
screenplays ludicrously tailored to the inappropriate age of the
 leading lady, mismatched directors (John Huston's "Annie,"
anyone?), gratuitous extravagance and the wistful echo of
 legendary stage performances that shall be forever lost because
 the original stars did not have the unstoppable screen box office
 appeal of Mitzi Gaynor or Topol.
If you are as mighty as Andrew Lloyd Webber, however, this needn't
happen. You can be your own producer. You can help write the
screenplay. You can keep every insipid line of dialogue and every
 last, stultifying note of your famously repetitious music. You can
 hire a director who appreciates extravagance from his days as a
costume designer and fully understands the diva temperament,
having once transformed Philip Seymour Hoffman into a drag queen.
And why embarrass a Hollywood star who can't sing
 when you can hire a nonentity who can't sing?"

Rotten Tomatoes.com
"Schumacher deserves blame for some terrible casting choices,
though. Between Butler and Patrick Wilson, who plays Christine's
 heroic suitor, Raoul, Schumacher has picked the two dullest stiffs
 in Hollywood to compete for Rossum's love.
It's too bad Jude Law and Clive Owen couldn't be imported from
"Closer" for these roles, because then we could understand why
Christine doesn't ditch these two warbling losers and run off with
the first cute guy she spots in the audience.
...The only other acting highlight is Minnie Driver as the preening
 diva displaced by Christine. Driver is the only cast member who
plays her part with a sense of fun. Oddly, even though she has her
own CD, Driver also is the only cast member whose singing is dubbed.
Too bad Schumacher didn't do the same for Butler, whose
 inadequate voice makes it all the more baffling that the filmmakers
refused to cast Antonio Banderas, who had lobbied for the role for years.
Banderas may not have turned this "Phantom" into a good movie,
but he would have brought more to his performance than snapping
his cape in anger, which is all Butler knows to do.
Zorro, at least, would know how to handle a cape."

Webber's tight reins hobble 'Phantom's' leap to screen
The San Francisco Chronicle
"Butler gives the Phantom everything he's got, belting out his solos
with terrifying conviction. The trouble is he doesn't seem particularly
terrifying in any other way, and he's awfully good-looking for the role.
When Christine rips off his mask, you expect to see the English patient.
Instead you get a hunk with a drooping eye."

A fright at the 'Opera'
Boston.com
""The Phantom of the Opera" lurches from Broadway to the
megaplex, and it has a little something to irritate everybody.
People looking for romance will find only cardboard lovers.
People looking for a resounding musical will find it odd that the
camera runs away from the lip-synching cast. And people
 looking for opera -- well, shame on you.
...As a preview, the Phantom lures her away to his Batcave
down in the theater's dank bowels. To get there, the camera plows
 though floorboards and stage doors the same way that "CSI" zooms
through intestines. This lair is where he keeps the big seashell that
doubles as a daybed and the organ on which he bangs out a steroidal,
 Vincent Price-worthy riff best described as schlock 'n' roll.
He seduces Christine with the show's signature song, "The Music
of the Night," and a ride in his gondola. She's bewildered by images
of herself clad in a wedding dress. The freaked-out cast and crew dub
this man a ghost. Christine just calls him her "angel of music," which is
true in much the same way that Howard Stern is the king of all media.
...Music in this production comes at you like the killer in a horror film.
There are people out there for whom "The Phantom of the Opera"
 can never be too loud, too deadly, too gaudy, or too obese with bloated
 songs. But even they might have a little trouble with the fact that in
director Joel Schumacher's hands the entire production often looks
 and feels like a Halloween halftime show. That moment will probably
 come during the big masquerade ball, where certain folks in the audience
 will turn to one another and ask about the actors dancing on-screen,
"Are they vogueing?"
...What's missing from "Phantom" is the fearlessness of certain movie
stars to transcend the clunkiness: a Hugh Jackman, a Johnny Depp, or
a Kirsten Dunst. Butler, Wilson, and Rossum don't have the charisma
to stop this thing from steamrolling over them, but they'd make
 wonderful displays in a wax museum. Dishwater has more razzle-dazzle."

The Davis Enterprise.com
"And, inevitably, those who saw the original production cannot help
 but compare this film's Phantom - Gerald Butler - to the pluperfect
Michael Crawford, who tore into the stage role with such savage glee.
 In the minds of many, Crawford owns this part the way Yul Brynner
and Rex Harrison remained firmly identified with "The King and I"
 and "My Fair Lady" for so many decades.
Although graced with a powerful and appropriately deeper singing voice,
 as an actor Butler never displays the full-blown mania of Crawford's
Phantom; Butler seems less a legendary figure of dread and more a
tragic figure of pity (thanks in great part to the "Elephant Man"
-style backstory inserted at a key moment).
...But will this version of "Phantom of the Opera" become the snapshot
 by which the play is remembered, half a century from now? Highly doubtful.
Schumacher's delivery is too pedestrian, and the stars - aside from Rossum
- simply aren't dynamic enough. I'm reminded of director Richard
Attenborough's pallid 1985 film adaptation of "A Chorus Line,"
which suffers from many of the same problems.
Crawford has nothing to worry about; his legacy remains unblemished."

It's a different 'Opera' and this phantom shows skin
Houston Chronicle
"His trademark mask in the movie is white kid leather. His shirt, puffy.
And unbuttoned halfway down, revealing the smidgens of hair adorning
the chest of the phantom of the opera.
It's never been this way on the stage. As fans readily know, Michael Crawford
 and every other singer who's strutted Broadway as the star of Sir Andrew
 Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera have appeared conservatively
nipped and tuxed.
But in Joel Schumacher's new $40 million movie version, now playing in
area theaters, all bets are off. If the director had his way, that
would apply to the men's shirts, too. "Joel wanted me topless at first,"
 says Gerard Butler, the virtually unknown 35-year-old actor from
 Scotland selected to portray on film the eerie, disfigured and phantomly
"angel of music." He's the mysterious, ghostlike character dwelling
 in the dark recesses of a vibrant opera house in 19th-century Paris.
And he's got his eyes on Christine, a dazzling ingénue he's not only secretly
trained as a world-class vocalist, but one he's coaxing to be his lover.
Butler's phantom stalks the screen, whispering and singing
Music of the Night to Christine with gaspy intonations more reminiscent
of Creed's rock-obsessed Scott Stapp than, say,
a pitch-perfect but less sexy Clay Aiken.
Skin is hardly the biggest change in the transfer from stage to screen.
..."Joel and I have always been pretty clear about what we wanted to do for
the film," Lloyd Webber says."

River Cities' Reader Online
"Joel Schumacher's crass and laborious film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's
Phantom of the Opera is a chore to sit through, which is especially shameful
because you can feel the audience really wanting to like it.
...Butler, though, has neither the dramatic nor vocal chops required for his
role, and establishes no rapport with the camera; he lacks the charming
intensity of an Antonio Banderas in Evita or an Ewan McGregor in Moulin
Rouge, and without a charismatic Phantom, your Phantom is as good as dead."

Want to rant about the movie?
Campaign member Crysania has opened a webboard for discussion
on the film, and what could have been.

A Phantom of its Former Self
TheaterMania.com
"We wanted to like the film version of The Phantom of the Opera.
 In a cinema landscape virtually barren of musicals, it would have given
us great pleasure to extol the virtues of this transfer from stage to screen.
Hoping that the critical and commercial success of Chicago would not turn
out to have been a fluke, we sat in high anticipation as the lights went
down and the movie began...
The opening sequences of Phantom are spectacular. The film begins as a
black and white photo that comes to life; the camera swoops in from a
distant long shot to a more intimate, almost prying point of view
that almost makes us feel we're watching archival silent movie footage...
This thrilling visual is an exquisitely cinematic segue into the flashback
 that is, in fact, the story of Phantom. Unfortunately, the movie never
comes anywhere near that kind of brilliance again.
Phantom should have been easily adaptable to the screen; indeed, the
stage version was a movie waiting to be made. Making it into a smash
 movie musical should have been a no-brainer, given the right sensibility
on the part of the director. Enter Joel Schumacher, who made one wrong
choice after another. He has turned what might have been an exciting
stunner of a film into an empty, emotionless music video.
...Start with the casting. Gerard Butler is wrong for the title role on two counts.
The first is that the guy's a hunk! (He should be at least a little scary-looking.)
 The second is that he doesn't have the voice for the part. Butler doesn't offer
 "The Music of the Night"; it's more like the music of mid-afternoon.
He often sounds as if he's straining and he rarely sustains a musical phrase.
...One of the most unsettling aspects of the movie, which is virtually sung
through, is how little emotion there is on the faces of the leads when they're
 singing. Their lips move (a little) and these big sounds reach our ears,
 but there is some sort of disconnect between the performers and the lyrics;
 their faces almost never wrinkle with expression, no matter what's coming
out of their mouths. The effect is perverse and distancing.
Nothing is more perverse, however, than the film's editing. In crucial scenes
of film, editing is much like making a key change: Just as one modulates to raise
 the temperature of the music, one edits within a scene to do the same. But not
 Schumacher! In the famous "Point of No Return" sequence near the end
 of Phantom, the title character is risking everything to win Christine. He's on
the opera stage with her, in front of everyone. Does Schumacher cut to a close-up?
 No. Does he cut to another angle of the same scene? No.
He cuts away to a group of dancers who are tangential to the drama.
At this moment, the emotional potency of the scene just dies, and you almost
 want to laugh out loud at the sheer stupidity of the choice.
...What a disappointment."

www.everythinggooscar.com
"Now if only Joel Schumacher could have done what Eastwood did in
 "Million Dollar Baby" with "The Phantom of the Opera." Based on one of
my all time favorite musicals (sue me), Schumacher's "Phantom" is an
overstylized disaster, a completely lopsided movie that doesn't even begin
to capture the magic of Webber's stage version until the final 30 minutes.
As a whole, however, "Phantom" just doesn't work, no matter how hard it may try...
And then there's Gerard Butler. Butler certainly never has to work hard to
make the masked Phantom physically alluring (nice lips), but the man simply
cannot hold the type of tune this role requires. Added to that, for nearly
 the first hour and a half Butler struts around like a robot, as if he were
doing some sort of homage to Michael Myers.
     Though Schumacher succeeds in creating a visual phenomenon with lush sets,
costumes and makeup, he also fails to bring life to the emotion and
excitement of Webber's original story. Instead, he simply treats it much like
 the Masquerade: he hides it behind the film's epic beauty so that unfortunately
 the audience can never find it."

The Aviator soars, while Phantom of the Opera stumbles into syrupy clutter
Cincinnati City Beat
"Something is wrong when the notorious Phantom of the Opera (Gerard Butler)
finally removes his trademark half-mask in front of his beloved Christine
(Emmy Rossum) and his horrible scars are not the least bit scary. The Phantom
is supposed to be a horribly disfigured musical genius, but the Phantom in director
Joel Schumacher's overblown and syrupy musical has eczema, which should
not be enough to drive a man mad.
It's been 18 years since The Phantom of the Opera made its world stage
 premiere in London, and its on-screen arrival -- a collaboration of Schumacher
 and the stage musical's creator, writer/composer/producer Andrew Lloyd Webber
 -- is nothing less than a monumental letdown. ...The key moments, when Rossum
 and Butler are together staring into each other's eyes and blurting their love songs,
fade without generating any emotional sparks. Rossum looks too much the little
girl to imagine her in the Phantom's underground bedroom without laughing.
On appearances alone, Phantom is a throwback to old-fashioned Hollywood
with massive sets, dry ice mist and expansive sets, but Schumacher fills every
 available space with chintzy clutter. When a blatant soap opera like Phantom
fails to generate the expected tears, Schumacher knows you need plenty of glitz
to draw one's attention away from the flaws."

The New Yorker
"The plot is impressively free of anything that does not smell of unpasteurized
melodrama. The bulk of it takes place in 1870, in Paris—ah, Paris, so
overwhelming in its impact that while some of its blessed citizens remember to
 speak  English with a French accent, others do not. We are at the Opéra,
 where everything and, if possible, everybody that can be gilded with gold
has received the necessary treatment.
...But wait. There is more. Christine, who in other respects seems perfectly sane,
 believes that she has been taught to sing by the ghost of her father. In fact,
her tutor is a nice lad in half a hockey mask who lives under the floorboards.
 He is the Phantom (Gerard Butler), his career ambitions include theatre
management, and to get to his lair you go through the looking glass,
along the creepy corridor, down the spiral staircase, take the first horse
 on your right (what the hell is a horse doing down there?), hop into the punt,
drift under the dripping portcullis, past the multiple mirrors, and, bang,
you’re there, right in the middle of a bed shaped like a giant eagle.
Watch out for its beak when you bend over to take your boots off.
...Fans of the original production will claim that one had to be there,
but then again it presumably bumped into the same stumbling blocks that
beset Schumacher’s movie. These include: (1) Why does the picky Parisian
audience fail to boo when Christine opens her mouth and sings not in the
manner of a true operatic soprano but in the moaning, miked-up warbling
 of every other Lloyd Webber heroine? (2) Is that really dry ice swirling
 around Christine in the graveyard scene, or is somebody cooking breakfast
 beneath her outspread cape? (3) When the Phantom finally tears away his
face gear, what, exactly, is the big deal? Is there anything wrong with his mug
 that couldn’t be solved by fresh fruit, Botox, and a healthy squirt of Visine?
...the Phantom, for example, keeps swishing his cloak to one side at random
intervals, like Batman getting rid of a bad smell. To be fair, his singing voice
has its own melodious texture, which is sure to revive fond memories for
anybody who has worked in a marble-grinding factory. In the end, all three
leads fall woefully short of the mark—deliberately so, I suspect, as if
 Lord Lloyd Webber had no desire to see his masterwork hijacked,
or even heightened, by the presence of an incontrovertible star. As a
result, we are left with what the Phantom calls “the music of the night,” or what
 you and I would call a gentle snore. “Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation,”
 he demands. Would you mind awfully if I don’t?"

charlotte.creativeloafing.com
"Gerard Butler and Patrick Wilson, who are both unremittingly dull
as, respectively, the disfigured Phantom and Christine's wealthy suitor
Raoul.  Butler is a particular disappointment -- who cares if Broadway's
Michael Crawford is getting along in years? That's who everyone
wanted to see immortalized on screen. By contrast, Butler's Phantom
 isn't particularly mysterious or menacing; he seems more like a
disgruntled opera fan who should be asking for a refund rather than
dropping chandeliers on patrons' heads."

James Sanford On Film
"When Warner Brothers producer Jack Warner hired Audrey Hepburn
to play the lead in the screen version of "My Fair Lady" 41 years ago,
musical theater devotees formed a chorus of disapproval. What about
Julie Andrews, they asked, who had built her career in America on her
 performance as Eliza Doolittle in "Lady" on Broadway? Similar sentiments
were heard a few years later when Barbra Streisand was cast in the film
adaptation of "Hello, Dolly," instead of Carol Channing, Broadway's Dolly.
Some roles become so closely identified with a particular performer that
any substitute is likely to face catcalls. Take, for instance, Michael Crawford
and "The Phantom of the Opera": For those who saw him in the original
London production or on Broadway in the late 1980s -- or to the millions
 more who have heard him on the original cast CD -- Crawford might as
 well hold the exclusive rights to the character who calls himself the
 "loathsome gargoyle that burns in Hell, but secretly yearns for Heaven."
Perhaps if "Phantom" had gone in front of the cameras 15 years ago
Crawford's performance would have been immortalized on celluloid and
"Phantom" fans would have been in seventh heaven.
Instead, the film adaptation of "Phantom" (now known as "Andrew Lloyd
 Webber's The Phantom of the Opera") stars Scottish singer/actor
Gerard Butler, who vigorously gnashes his teeth, confidently strides through
 secret corridors and diligently attempts to express his all-consuming passion
 for the innocent soprano Christine (Emmy Rossum), the Paris Opera Populaire
ingenue who falls under the Phantom's spell as he helps her become a sensation.
But despite Butler's enthusiasm, most moviegoers are likely to feel like
they're seeing the understudy, not the star. Butler trained in rock (he fronted
the Scottish band Speed) and his thick voice lacks the flexibility and
shading necessary in performing musical theater material. He's notably
more comfortable with the Phantom's darker moments -- such as the
gloriously lusty "The Point of No Return," one of the film's notable high
points -- than he is in putting over the score's ballads, such as
"The Music of the Night," a pivotal number that sounds uncertain
 and rather unconvincing here.
Unfortunately, Butler's miscasting is hardly the only problem evident
 in this "Phantom." Director Joel Schumacher (who was almost certainly
operating under the watchful eye of producer/composer Webber) has
 brought the show to the screen, yet large portions of the movie have
the feel of a photographed stage production. As Christine mournfully
makes her way through an obviously artificial graveyard, singing
"Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again," a blanket of meringue-thick
 fog lingers along the ground and confetti-like snow gently falls. It's the kind
 of scene that might work perfectly well in the theater, but when it's blown up
to fill a Cinemascope-sized screen it looks slightly ridiculous.
The same thing happens when the Phantom whisks Christine away to his
elaborate underground lair, which he describes as a "vault of unending night."
 With its numerous candelabras held by gilded human arms (an idea stolen
 from director Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast"), stylish full-length
mirrors and translucent drapes, however, they might as well be in the
basement of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. The crucial atmosphere of
 menace isn't there; suddenly, we're watching "The Batman of the Opera."
"Phantom" also conjures up another unintended homage in the would-be
show-stopper "Masquerade," as dozens of partygoers in black and white
 outfits whoop it up at an opera gala. The sequence is attractively shot,
but the moves choreographer Peter Darling has come up with make you
half-expect Madonna to drop in and shout, "Strike a pose! Vogue!""

'Phantom' phails
Jam Showbiz
"...it was Andrew Lloyd Webber who turned the Phantom into a
commercial phenomenon, with the modern stage musical.
Now Webber & Friends are trying to kill it off.
Not intentionally, of course, but their new movie musical
The Phantom Of The Opera is so dull, such a ghost of its former self,
that the whole franchise could suffer.
"...Perhaps it is due to the regrettable choice of gloss-over director
Joel Schumacher to helm the piece. While he occasionally scores
with tough little films such as Tigerland, Schumacher usually directs
big, empty spectacles and has killed a franchise before by making
 the travesty Batman and Robin.
.... Perhaps Gerard Butler is too handsome as the Phantom/Stalker
for this to work. Even when he is seen without his disguise,
the disfigurement is really not that awful. Not for the psychological
 gymnastics he goes through.
As a result, Butler's big singing voice cannot convey the true torment
 of the title character. And it is the murky emotional depths of the man
that should drive the story along.
...Whatever the reasons for its mediocrity, this version of
The Phantom Of The Opera is a clunker despite the effort that went
 into it, and for all the iconic history of the story."

Orlando Weekly Movies
"...we should probably subtract the amount of time that actor Gerard Butler
spends with his mouth open. An unschooled, inferior vocalist whose lip-synching
skills are equally embryonic, Butler is a lackluster Phantom from the moment he
enters the frame. The deficiencies extend to his physical presence: A double chin
and an obvious lisp are not attributes that tend to goose the intimidation factor
of such an iconic villain's role."

EARTHtimes.org
"Gerard Butler’s essay of the Phantom is a big letdown in the film.
Comparisons, which were inevitable, only succeed in underscoring
Butler’s poor performance. Michael Crawford in the stage version put
in a performance that overnight turned his career around. Besides
Webber’s music, it was Crawford’s performance that got the applause. One
is reminded also of the unforgettable 1925 version where Lon Chaney
added an eerie touch to the role, with his scarred face after he is unmasked.
In the new version, Butler’s performance and unmemorable voice do not impress.
He also fails to spark any fires during performances with Rossum’s Christine."

Christine Daae's Phantom of the Opera Movie Review

eFilmCritic.com
"...And yet, all of these flaws could have been overcome if the title role
 had been properly cast with someone who could simultaneously project
 a sense of menace, charisma and raw sexuality while still demonstrating
legitimate musical chops. ...Instead, the part has been wildly miscast with
the aggressively bland Gerard Butler, the man that you forgot starred in
"Dracula 2000" and "Tomb Raider  2" the minute you left the multiplex.
He is simply terrible-the guy who takes your order at Applebee's has
more charisma than him. As the dull-but-good suitor Raoul, he might
have been passable but as the Phantom, he is a total botch.
Put it this way-the side of the Phantom's face that is covered by
his mask should not be his most expressive side."

Mark Dujsik Review
"Emmy Rossum has a spectacular voice, propelling Christine as a sympathetic
heroine, and she handles the unusual character turns thrown at her by Webber
and Schumacher's script with delicate ease—even if we don't believe a
second of them. Oddly enough, though, it seems that she had some tutelage
outside of the Phantom in developing her voice, as Gerard Butler is,
to put it kindly, far less impressive.
...The big songs vary, although if Butler is attempting to belt out one of them,
you can assume it will falter.
The movie isn't terrible, just not involving, and more and more little
annoyances stick out as it progresses.  Wondering just how exactly the
Phantom manages to keep his half-mask on his face without any sort of strap
is a trivial bother compared to feeling nothing for any of the parties
involved in the entire affair.  Without an emotional entryway to the story,
The Phantom of the Opera is all empty spectacle. "

The Fresno Bee
"This "Phantom's" menace is the Phantom himself.
Too young, too uncharismatic and too bland to heat up his share
of the red-hot love triangle that has kept the Broadway musical
 humming along for years, Scottish actor Gerard Butler
 — who last starred as a hunk of the month opposite Angelina Jolie
 in the "Lara Croft" sequel — is earnest but generic.
 He reminds me of a Phantom action figure: a chiseled face
 with the nuance of plastic, complete with itty-bitty mask so
snugly fitted over his disfigured skin that the disguise seems positively
dainty, not the heart-breaking attempt of a scorned man to protect
himself from a cruel world. At no point — not once! — did I ever
 truly  believe while watching the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical
 version of "The Phantom of the Opera" that Christine (an otherwise
radiant Emmy Rossum), the chorus girl whose silver-toned soprano voice so
entrances the Phantom, ever feels for him anything beyond mild affection.
...We're supposed to feel for the Phantom, for his scars and his sadness,
and yet be wary of him — because of his capricious nature and almost insane
jealousy.  He's an archetype: one of those hypnotic and murky
underworld literary figures, along with such shadowy creatures as vampires
and werewolves, to whom we grant both the power to frighten and titillate.
But thanks to Joel Schumacher's methodical and almost sterile direction,
 which is so precise that it's as if he's performing a chemistry experiment,
the ache is somehow missing from this "Phantom."
...Time and again, however, Schumacher fumbles the most important
 element: the love story. You get the feeling he was so worried about
the deep purple silk of the diva's dress and the Rodin- inspired statues
 on the roof of the opera house that he forgot that the real chemistry
he needed was the kind that causes a sizzle.
...With a big Hollywood budget, the production design of the film is
 suitably  grand. But, again, I feel as if the love story in the film isn't given
as much tender care as the sets and costumes. The Phantom's watery lair
beneath the opera house, for example, is so vast and elaborately art directed
 that it suggests Disneyland; I kept expecting an errant boat from
 "The Pirates of the Caribbean" ride to splash through.
...The result: a movie musical that doesn't break any ground whatsoever.
Unlike "Chicago," say, which was emphatically cinematic, or "Moulin
Rouge,"  which electrified the screen with music-video energy, "Phantom"
 merely seems dutiful. All it asks of you is to remember the magic of the
stage musical. For a film, I don't think that's enough."

'Phantom' is ghost of itself on film
The Houston Chronicle
"Unlike its hugely successful stage show, the film version of
The Phantom of the Opera has no intermission. Yet it needs one.
...Onstage, Phantom's bold set design and nervy pyrotechnics were
thrilling without overwhelming its sob story's intimacy. The magic
of suggestion buoyed the music of the night. On film, Phantom's
looks are lavish yet literal, and its close-ups of belted numbers
command attention without truly commanding our hearts.
...But with scant dialogue and few pauses in the operatic onslaught,
the unknowns remain just that -- iconic emblems more than flesh-and-blood people.
They are vessels for songs, not the emotional engines that can drive a libretto.
Michael Crawford, the stage's original Phantom, would have played
him on screen, as well, if Webber's divorce from Sarah Brightman,
the original Christine, hadn't wrecked that project years ago.
In his place is much younger Scottish actor Butler, who seems cast for sex appeal.
But his vitality and handsomeness, revealed by a smaller mask, make
Butler no pitiable genius. A cunning stalker who can be fiercely violent,
he's more of a bully, undeserving of sympathy.
...Perhaps the film will work better on DVD, where you can add your
 own intermission and individually savor its music videos -- er, songs.
But following one after another for 140 minutes only takes you deeper
into the labyrinth of a film losing its way, engulfed in spectacle
 when what it needed was sincerity."

Eye Weekly
"First, by way of inventory for the die-hards with the online Phan Club membership:
 the candelabras still rise up inexplicably from the water, the title song still
rehashes Prokofiev and '80s synth-pop in equal measure, and the lyrics
still rhyme "night" with "light" at regular intervals. But the Phantom
doesn't get to hurl fireballs from his staff at that sissy Vicomte,
 which we can all agree is an outrage.
...Joel Schumacher's big-screen treatment won't do anything to alienate
the legions of folks who casually attended and enjoyed the musical,
and is probably faithful enough for the purists.
(Not actual theatre purists, of course -- they're too busy sprinting in the other direction.)
...The dully expository songs insist that we're watching a passionate love
triangle between the titular bogey (Gerard Butler), the breathy underage
ingénue Christine (Emmy Rossum) and the milquetoasty Vicomte de Chagny
(Patrick Wilson), but there's nary a ripped bodice in sight. Which is surprising,
considering that Schumacher is the aesthete-pervert who introduced
rubber-nipples, sculpted ass-plates and prodigious codpieces to Batman's wardrobe.
The director's trademark lechery shines through, though,
in his handling of starlet Emmy Rossum, just 16 when she was cast. Her entire
 performance is one extended, open-mouthed swoon -- she sings beautifully,
but otherwise shambles around like a Halcyon addict.
Or maybe she's just bored by co-star Butler.
This Phantom's tantrums barely cut warm butter, and he amasses a pretty
shoddy list of victims, failing to hit even a single patron when he drops that
famous chandelier. Somewhere, Lon Chaney is watching, and he is not amused."

(Catching up with the reviews... there is so much material to work with,
we are rather feeling like bloated Romans at the ultimate feast...)  ;)
The rocky Phantom picture show
Scotland on Sunday
"THE numbers are staggering. As many as 65,000 performances around
the world for some 80 million people, ringing up $3.2bn in box-office receipts.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s mega-musical The Phantom of the Opera, which
opened in London on October 9, 1986, is a cultural phenomenon that cries
 out for a multiplex adaptation.
Alas, Joel Schumacher’s 143-minute rendition hints that something
intangible has been lost in translation from stage to screen.
Gassy and airless, stiff-backed and bathetic, the movie at least makes a
worthy enough addition to a singular directorial filmography that
includes A Time to Kill, 8MM, and Batman and Robin. Schumacher’s
folly may not break the kinds of ticket-sale records that the theatre
production handily demolished, but surely the celluloid Phantom sets a
new bar for discretionary spending - the candelabra budget alone on this
doozy could cover the utility bill for one of the smaller EU member states.
...The movie reaches a point of no return when the blighted queenmaker
whisks his pliant muse from her bouquet-stuffed dressing room and leads
her through copious dry ice and candlelit Venetian-style waterways to his
dungeon lair, where the bully berates her in song - "SING FOR MEEEE!"
- and paws at her until she faints. "All must pay homage to my myooo-zic,"
 he intones, even though the booming drum machine, keyboard pulses,
and mechanical handclaps are grafted directly out of the mid-1980s
synth-rock playbook.
...Phantom aspires to achieve a star-crossed love triangle, but ends up stuck
 with a control freak harassing a confused teenager. The Phantom is too
self-pitying a monomaniac to exert convincing sex appeal...When the Phantom
whips off his cloak - a favourite exclamatory tic - and commands Christine,
"Let your fantasies unwind!" we’re left with no idea what those fantasies
 might consist of: fame and fortune on the stage?
A smouldering S&M tryst? Beyond-the-grave communion with her father?
A percentage of the grosses from the upcoming Vegas Phantom?
...But at once a muddled period piece and a mouldy 1980s time capsule,
Schumacher and Lloyd Webber’s extravaganza misses its outside chance at
camp-classic status; one can’t imagine a ‘Sing-a-long-a-Phantom’ any time soon."

JoeCritic.com 12/25/04
"In its screen incarnation, The Phantom of the Opera is like an ornately
wrapped holiday package that as you tear it open heightens your expectations,
only to disappoint when you find a pair of socks inside.
...The main reason rests with Lloyd Webber and director Joel Schumacher
— who share screenplay credit and blame for adapting the musical
 — and their cast choices.
...That decision creates a double-edged sword. With no preconceived notions
about the performers, you have no set expectations.
On the other hand they lack the star power and charisma needed
— especially in the casting of the Phantom —
to make these characters larger than life in a way millions of people who
have seen the play or heard the original cast recording have imagined.
...Gerard Butler has neither the range nor the menace to portray the
Phantom. When forced to scale the heights singing "Music of the
Night," he resorts to shouting out the lyrics.
...Plus his Phantom makeup is ineffectual. He is not the horrible creature
 everyone has been singing about. His face looks like a combination of
a bad sunburn and a severe case of acne.
...Schumacher wouldn't recognize subtlety if it introduced itself and kissed him on the mouth."

eFilmCritic.com
"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."

  Liberace would have been so proud
 Slam-glam 'Phantom' frightens not at all
Sun-Sentinel.com
"Apart from its ineptitude, the most terrifying thing about Joel Schumacher's
big-screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical The Phantom of the Opera
 is its feckless junking of a classic nightmare figure.
...In the marvelous 1925 silent production, Lon Chaney was a man so spectral
that he was thoroughly believable as a perverted, desiccated muse - the spirit of
 romantic music gone rotten. Even when he was just a profile in the shadows,
he carried himself like a spellbinding impresario. And despite his skeletal appearance,
he moved on his victims with agility and dispatch.
In Schumacher's relentlessly arrhythmic and tone-deaf film, Gerard Butler
plays the title role as if he were just plucked out of Monty Python's lumberjack
chorus. What did he do to win this plum part? Obviously not sing or act.
He's a pudding of a performer, devoid of either animal threat or animal magnetism.
And given the way Webber has already watered down the horror (the Phantom's
facial deformation is hardly as bad as some bungled plastic surgeries,
 and his mask is tres chic), Butler's ineffectuality is a disaster.
Maybe nothing could have salvaged the haywire rococo extravagance of
Schumacher's rancid vision; the director has taken elegant elements from
Jean Cocteau films - a mirror entrance to a secret world, self-moving candelabras
complete with human arms - and realized them with the slam-glam touch
 of a Liberace. But without a strong Phantom there's nothing to fuel the material's
seductive bad dream of High Art meeting High Society or the love triangle
that ensnares the Phantom's musical prodigy Christine (Emmy Rossum)
and her bold cavalier Raoul (Patrick Wilson).
...Even fans of Webber's repetitive score may groan at the flattening way the
ensemble bats it out and at the glitzy way Schumacher tries to hype up the big
numbers. His staging of "Masquerade" simply replays Madonna's "Vogue."
Schumacher has been frank about his attempt to do a sort of power-pop opera;
he says his goal was to put Webber's work "on steroids." I know musical directors
 aren't always sports fans, but hasn't he read the papers lately?
Doesn't he know that's not a good thing?"

'Phantom' is ghost of former self
The Star-Ledger
Stars: 1 1/2
"For nearly 100 years, "The Phantom of the Opera"
has delighted readers, silent-movie fans and horror fiends. It has survived
clumsy rewrites, Nelson Eddy and even a TV "homage" starring Kiss.
So it will probably survive the help of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher, too.
Their new "Phantom," though, makes it touch and go for awhile.
And even if the immortal monster is still standing at the end, the audience members
may be snoozing in their seats.
...Gerard Butler, who seems to be specializing in second-rate fantasy these days
 (he was in "Dracula 2000" and the last Lara Croft film) plays the Phantom
as a peevish sort with a troublesome skin condition.
...As for director Joel Schumacher, his approach seems to be to cram every scene
with more candles than a Pottery Barn catalogue, and then just stay out of the way.
Sets are dressed with cobwebs and dry-ice mist, and the Phantom's subterranean
lair is sadly disappointing (although the candelabras that emerge, lit, from under
water would have impressed even Liberace).
...If you're one of the 80 million people said to have seen this show since its 1986
 premiere, this movie may provide a pleasant keepsake of the experience.
If you want something more from musicals than a single syrupy hit, though
-- and have fond memories of the Phantom as our most romantic of monsters
-- then seek out the old Lon Chaney silent instead, and put on your own darn music."

Denton Texas 12/24/04
"...The Phantom himself,
Gerard Butler (Dear Frankie), who remains as expressionless behind
his stylish half mask as he is in most of his movies."

Pity the 'Phantom' phans
TimesLeader.com
"You can't exactly go small when you're doing a movie adaptation of an
Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. (Although a cinema verite version of "Cats,"
shot with hand-held digital video and starring actual felines, could only be an
improvement.) But even walking in with expectations of grandeur cannot
prepare you for the bombastic monstrosity that is "Andrew Lloyd Webber's
The Phantom of the Opera."
Simultaneously amped-up and rock-and-rolled down, presumably to make
it palatable to a wider audience, the film is far more interested in earsplitting
crescendos than in subtly touching the heart.
...But when the Phantom (Scottish actor Gerard Butler) steps from the
shadows of Paris' Opera Populaire and shows his masked face for the first time,
it's hard to resist the impulse to laugh. It all seems so campy.
Rather than a force to fear from Gaston Leroux's novel, this Phantom
(who's about 10 years younger than Michael Crawford was when he won a Tony
Award for the role in 1988) comes off as a petulant brat at worst and an insecure
control freak at best.
...Those who've never seen the musical may find themselves entertained,
but they deserve better than this, a ghost of the real thing."

The Wall Street Journal 12/24/04
"Call me culturally impoverished, but I've never seen "The Phantom of the
Opera" on stage. Legions of those who have seen the live show will be making
informed judgments on Joel Schumacher's film version. Let me make some
uninformed observations, based only on watching the film, an experience best
likened to being battered by hurricane-force winds generated by an organ
with all stops pulled permanently out, along with an orchestra suffering from
some shared anxiety disorder, and shattered by vocal cords vibrating in the
service of a composer who knows neither restraint nor mercy.
Emmy Rossum plays, very well -- no kidding, really well -- the Fiancée of Dracula,
while Gerard Butler has the Michael Crawford role of a bat-cave dweller anguished
by what seems to be a serious but treatable complexion problem... One passing shot
reveals that the opera's charwomen use earplugs. They've got the right idea."

San Diego Union-Tribune
"Jane Woodside, who's seen the show 20 times, says she'll refuse to see the film
because studio executives didn't cast Michael Crawford, the beloved actor who
first created the stage role of the Phantom nearly two decades ago.
"I don't reward people for insulting me," said Woodside from her home in Pennsylvania.
...When Crawford played the Phantom, Woodside recalls standby lines stretching
blocks in both New York City and Los Angeles. "They were scalping tickets for $1,000,"
 she recalled. "Crawford just blew your socks off," she added, noting that she is angry
that executives are choosing other actors for the role that can make or break the entire musical."

Webber’s Phantom gets no ovation
Earthtimes.org
"Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest production of Gaston Leroux’s immensely
popular musical turned out to be a huge disappointment. It appears more
like a personal showcase for Webber’s music rather than the esthetic
execution of director Joel Schumacher.
...Gerard Butler’s essay of the Phantom is a big letdown in the film. Comparisons,
which were inevitable, only succeed in underscoring Butler’s poor performance.
Michael Crawford in the stage version put in a performance that overnight
turned his career around. Besides Webber’s music, it was Crawford’s performance
that got the applause...In the new version, Butler’s performance and unmemorable
voice do not impress. He also fails to spark any fires during performances
with Rossum’s Christine."

...Gerard Butler lacks the commitment and chops that Michael Crawford so famously
brought to the role of the Phantom in the story’s Broadway version.
Film Journal International and Gay City News
"The shamelessness of this musical theft is not half as bad as the fact that innocent,
future generations will assume that these are, indeed, Webber’s original inspirations.
...What really made the stage version of this musical work was Michael Crawford,
with his theatrically romantic commitment and eerie choirboy’s voice investing his
songs with a hushed intensity. It was a career-morphing casting coup that forever
transformed him from the eternal, skinny juvenile of “Hello, Dolly!” into a
 modern-day matinee idol. Without a proper Phantom, the entire enterprise sags,
and, unfortunately, Butler is a disaster here. There’s a bland, soap opera factor
about his masked look and acting, in chest-baring piratical blouson, and the
sound department has thunderously enhanced his unmemorable voice. He has little
chemistry with Rossum’s Christine, and, when she finally unmasks him, his slightly
warped makeup is a definite letdown, after Lon Chaney’s scarifying mien in the
unforgettable 1925 silent, or even Claude Rains’ in the garish Technicolor 1945 version."

Memphis Commercial Appeal
"The Phantom's studly makeover is just one of many poor decisions that haunt
Joel Schumacher's bombastic movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The
Phantom of the Opera," now at the Cordova Cinema.
...But if Chaney represented a terrifying avatar of the uncanny, Schumacher's
Phantom is a prisoner of kitsch, a victim not of society's cruelty but of
Rick Wakeman organ chords, "99 Luftballoons" synth beats and an Antonio
Banderas patent-leather haircut.
...Since its 1986 debut in London and its 1988 opening on Broadway, where it
continues to play after 7,700 performances, "Phantom" reportedly has been
seen by 80 million patrons and grossed more than $3.2 billion from touring
productions all over the globe.
But whatever charms and frissons Harold Prince's original Broadway staging
held for audiences have been utterly lost within the lavish production design,
swirling camera movements and incoherent plot motivations of this
cinematic revamp credited to screenwriters Schumacher and Weber.
...this "Phantom" doesn't work as a horror movie, a tragic romance or a
musical. It isn't scary or heartbreaking or uplifting. It just sort of swings there,
limply, like the body of the stagehand who earns the film's only onscreen death,
wrongly convinced that its big budget and musical theater origins make it more fragrant
than such other rotting corpses of the multiplex as "Seed of Chucky" and "The Cookout."
...Perhaps Michael Crawford and Webber's ex-wife Sarah Brightman, the stage
musical's original Phantom and Christine, could have brought life to this
"music of the night" (the actors reportedly were considered too old for the
parts by the filmmakers). But because Schumacher -- the high-gloss
schlockmeister responsible for "St. Elmo's Fire" and the last two "Batman"
films -- mishandles the material, we become aware of its inherent limitations...
...when we do see his face, our reaction is a shrug, not a shriek. He calls himself a
"loathsome gargoyle," but he looks more like a guy with a really bad sunburn,
or maybe a seafood allergy."

The New York Times 12/24/04
"Depending on one's Lloyd Webber tolerance level, and there are legions of diehard
"phans," the lavish-looking movie will either feel like a gaudily wrapped Christmas
present or evince Grinch-like disdain. (Of course the phans have their own agenda,
and while some are enthusiastic about the new-fangled "Phantom," other purists
 are still outraged that Michael Crawford, the star of the original Broadway
production and now 62, does not play the lead.)
...At times, the movie has the dewy romance and passion of Zeffirelli's "Romeo
and Juliet." And if Mr. Butler's Phantom lacks the masterly full-throated
ghoulishness of the Broadway interpretation (particularly that of Mr. Crawford),
he makes up for it in matinee-idol sex appeal; this is the Phantom as Heathcliff,
complete with a tragic childhood. (And black leather Michael Jackson-like gloves.)"

Des Moines Register 12/22/04
"Sixteen years in the making, "The Phantom of the Opera" unfolds as a
major disappointment.  If this film had been staged in the Paris Opera House in
1870, it would have opened and closed the same month. The spectacle looks
fantastic with all of its trappings but ultimately feels hollow inside...
Butler was doomed from the start by the shadow of the musical's stage star,
Michael Crawford, but Butler has neither the voice nor the acting chops to pull this off.
He's too close in age to Christine, who the Phantom has mentored for at least
a decade and his sparring with the ponytailed Wilson looks like something out
of a photo shoot for Abercrombie & Fitch.
...For all of the time that Schumacher had to think about his movie, however,
it's stunning how it lacks vision. The gondola journey to the Phantom's lair
looks like a cross between a Celine Dion video and an e-ticket ride at Disneyland.
Where are the Pirates of the Caribbean?
...Then again, this is the guy who pretty much destroyed the Batman franchise with
"Batman & Robin" (1997).
He can now add Webber's musical to his list of victims."

The Irish Examiner - Breaking News
Phantom panned by US critics 
Andrew Lloyd Webber's screen version of his hit musical
The Phantom Of The Opera has been panned by early reviews in the US.
It remains to be seen whether US audiences will be put off
by the sneering critics over the Christmas weekend.

IMDB - The Buzz
"4 out of 10: We can do it any way you want.
I can hold director Joel Shumacher's arms and you punch, or you can
hold `em and I'll punch.  But somebody's got to do some punching.
Or, maybe it's Andrew Lloyd Webber, the creator of the musical
"Phantom of the Opera" we should blame with this boring,
lifeless movie that many of us have waited years and years for.
After all, he hand-picked Schumacher to make it.
...This Phantom shies away from its roots as a musical,
having the auctioneer present the lots with all the enthusiasm of someone
announcing that a white Toyota's lights are on in the church parking lot.
The camerawork, lighting and editing are uninspired as well.
...I hate to say this but Gerard Butler is an awful Phantom
(picked again, according to reports, by Webber). His singing,
which mostly involves his nasal cavity, irritates right off.
One of the signature pieces, "Music of the Night," which is one of the Phantom's
first bits, displays Butler's ability to vibrate the top of his palette when he gets to
the consonant "n": "Night time sharpennnnnns, Heightens each sensationnnnnnn
Darkness stirs, And wakes imaginationnnnnn." By the end of the number the
chocolate coating on my bon-bons had been rattled off by the harmonics.
...The Phantom, this time round, is given even more backstory,
thus robbing him of some of his mystique while simultaneously
NOT making us sympathize with him more.
Then there's the matter of his disfigurement, which here seems to be a bad case of eczema.
...The strangling of Joel Schumacher is a completely crazy suggestion,
but a quick blow to the solar plexus, for botching what would have
appeared to be a no-lose project, seems warranted."

Film version of 'Opera' sounds a sour note
Buffalo News 12/22/04
"It wasn't over until the dwarf sang.
...But no matter how much how Andrew Lloyd Webber and director
Joel Schumacher tweak their screenplay, they cannot banish the ghost of
the original stage production. In the theater, "The Phantom of the Opera"
soared. The show transcended its creaky plot and repetitive score to
celebrate theater's imaginative power. Harold Prince, director of a previous
film version, achieved a cinematic sweep and emotional charge that's
surprisingly absent from the current film.
...But the biggest disappointment is the Phantom, Gerard Butler,
whose lack of singing ability is barely disguised by tinny electronic reverb.
Butler's pouty Phantom ekes little charisma.
His final unmasking seems merely irritating, not terrifying.
It doesn't help that the Phantom's supposed deformity resembles a bad rash.
Nicole Kidman's fake nose in "The Hours" was scarier."

Las Vegas Mercury 12/23/04
"The power of its story has been watered down by some poor casting
choices and Schumacher and Webber's surface screenplay.
...Its plot about a disfigured man begging to be recognized for his inner beauty
(his music) is a plea any homely person--or anyone who's been an unwilling
outsider for an extend period of time--is likely to respond to.
In Webber's 1988 Broadway version, the phantom really seemed to be a ghost.
In an effort to woo the woman he's mentored all her life at a late 1800's
opera house, he killed and threatened, often without being seen.
Here, all his villainous tricks are observed and demystified.
There's a hole at the center due to Gerard Butler's lack of star magnetism.
The show revolves around the phantom's passions, but the 36-year-old pretty
Scottish actor doesn't do epic passion. He's an amicable leading man
(with only an adequate singing voice) who can't begin to suggest the emotional
torment that makes his character cry out for the love of a beautiful woman.
(The phantom isn't just cooing for a babe. He's lamenting
all loss in having led a substandard life.)"

The LA Times 12/22/04
"Just like that, the screen becomes engorged with color, piles of dust as
thick as frosting waft off the seats and chandelier bulbs alight as the
familiar remedial melodies that all but soured our coming of age
(OK, mine) unleash a bombastic assault on the ear.
That's when it becomes unavoidably clear that we're not in
Paris, France, at all. We're in Paris, Las Vegas.
...Now, the tortured Phantom, who is not only disfigured but in love with
Christine (plus his voice box appears to be permanently grafted to a reverb
 machine), is just one repeated chorus away from a total meltdown.
Not that this particular Phantom seems to have it so bad. He lives in a
candlelit subterranean grotto, accessible only by gondola and Venetian-style
canal, that Siegfried and Roy would kill for. And he's uncommonly
attractive for a horribly disfigured man. In fact, as horribly disfigured
men go, he's a total babe. (The horrible disfigurement is confined to
part of the face, which he somewhat rakishly conceals with a modish,
self-adhesive white mask.)
...To watch Christine as she makes her way to her father's grave
("To my father's grave!" she commands the cabby) is to become convinced
that "Phantom" is kind of hoping our minds will wander or become
distracted by things like the grotesque carving of an agonized Jesus in a
corner of the cemetery, or the Phantom's Vegas-tacular swan-shaped bed.
...It's as if "Showgirls" had been production designed by Toulouse-Lautrec
 and Victoria's Secret and convinced itself that it had class.
If you're going to be in Vegas in the spring of 2006 anyway,
I'd skip the movie and wait for the extravaganza."

Phoenix New Times 12/22/04
"The unhappy spectacle is brought even lower by some God-awful,
rock-flavored caterwauling from Scotsman Gerard Butler, who
provides a Phantom every bit as uncharismatic as he is unmusical.
... Butler, whose movie-monster credits already include a Dracula
(for Wes Craven) and an Attila the Hun, is so inert and unmagnetic
that you may find yourself rooting for Goody Two-shoes."

Readers Digest Magazine Articles
"In The Phantom of the Opera, a mysterious masked ghoul haunts a Parisian
opera house and demands that a young chorus girl named Christine become the
opera's new leading lady. Lon Chaney was the first to embody the Phantom in
the 1925 silent film, and decades later, Michael Crawford shot to
international stardom as the title character in Andrew Lloyd Webber's
theatrical musical, The Phantom of the Opera, which has been running on
Broadway for more than 16 years. Unfortunately for the new cinematic
adaptation of Lloyd Webber's popular show, starring newcomer Gerard Butler
in the demanding title role, it is Crawford -- or rather, his absence -- 
that haunts the opera now.
Lloyd Webber had been trying to make his blockbuster Broadway show into a
movie for more than a decade. When director Joel Schumacher was finally set
to cast the film last year, Crawford, now in his 60s, was deemed too old to
play the Phantom. Reportedly, John Travolta and Antonio Banderas, two actors
who had success with previous singing roles in Grease and Evita,
respectively, expressed interest. Schumacher and Lloyd Webber opted instead
for the virtually unknown Butler, who had little singing experience but who,
they felt, would add sex appeal to the show's love-triangle plotline.
Unfortunately, Butler brings little more than a handsome profile to the
role. His voice is simply not up to the vocal demands of songs like "Music
of the Night," which Crawford performed so indelibly. Nor does Butler have
sufficient stage presence for this larger-than-life character, something a
marquee name like Banderas would have achieved more easily."

ContraCostaTimes.com
"On Broadway, the famous pairing of Sarah Brightman and Michael Crawford
may well have made for a very passionate experience. But as realized by
Schumacher, this "Phantom" is like being trapped in the frilly bedroom of an
absurdly romantic, borderline psychotic 13-year-old girl for nearly two and a
half hours. The story is garbled, unclear and at the same time, painfully thin."

SouthFlorida.com
"The handsome Wilson, who starred on Broadway in The Full Monty and the
latest revival of Oklahoma!, has a fine Broadway tenor voice. Former rock
singer Butler, who doesn't look his 35 years as the Phantom, has a rough and
undisciplined voice that, while serviceable, will make fans of the original
stage star Michael Crawford wince."

Toledoblade.com
"What exactly is a horse doing in the bowels of the Paris Opera?
Waiting to spirit the Phantom away to ... where, precisely?
EuroDisney?
...Butler, who replaces Michael Crawford’s famous performance, is equally anachronistic:
He shouts and thumps his fist like Celine Dion."

Theavclub.com
"For years, the speculation concerning a big-screen adaptation of
Andrew Lloyd Webber's smash hit musical The Phantom Of The Opera
centered on the casting of the title role. An entire nation of teddy-bear-collecting
Phantom fans campaigned relentlessly for Michael Crawford to reprise the stage
role with which he will always be identified. Antonio Banderas fought hard to
snag the role for himself. Suffering through all 143 interminable minutes of the
long-awaited, long-overdue, way-too-long Phantom adaptation, it's easy to presume
that either actor would have been preferable to Gerard Butler, the semi-unknown
whom director Joel Schumacher eventually cast.
...A veteran of such turkeys as Dracula 2000 and Timeline, Butler struggles valiantly,
but he never remotely makes the role his own. In order for the film to work
emotionally, the actor playing the Phantom has to dominate it in spite of
scant screen time and only partial use of his face. Alas, Butler barely registers,
and it certainly doesn't help that he strains to hit the high notes.
Ultimately, all he brings to the role is chiseled good looks, which isn't
necessarily a plus for someone playing one of pop culture's most famous ghouls.
...Adding an additional layer of cheese to a project that already reeks hopelessly of
Velveeta, Schumacher pumps up the empty spectacle, stranding his
fetching-but-lifeless mannequins amid giant sets and overblown production numbers.
But where someone like Brian De Palma (who already covered this territory much
more effectively with Phantom Of The Paradise) or Baz Luhrmann might have been
able to elevate Webber's tawdry material to operatic (or at least rock-operatic) heights,
Schumacher's gothic Grand Guignol, a half-baked mashup of Meatloaf pop and
Lon Chaney horror-show, just feels tacky."

Salon.com
"A battle for Christine's heaving bosoms and milky thighs ensues. Will she
go off with her Fabio-tressed sweetie for a lifetime of kissin' and cuddlin'?
Or will she "Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in," as the Phantom
 implores her -- in other words, have hot, wild, debasing sex with the pissed-off
bully in the mask? Who isn't really such a bad guy, just misunderstood.
And who also, by the way, represents the spirit of her dead father.
...Now it can be told: Although the press has connivingly led us to believe
otherwise, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher are really pseudonyms for
two 11-year-old girls from Allentown, Pa., who, disgruntled because their parents
wouldn't buy them canopy beds, decided to sit down and write themselves a
musical, darn it. And they'd make a movie out of it, too, just you wait and see.
"The Phantom of the Opera" is the long-awaited result.
..."Phantom of the Opera" feels less like a movie than a nonstop amusement
park ride designed to make people feel they really got their money's worth.
There's something blatantly condescending about the aggressive lavishness of
the musical numbers, as if a bunch of big-city suits got together and said,
"Let's have big sets! And lots of gold and lace on the costumes! And singing, lots
of singing. Who cares what kind, just lots of it. John Q. Public really loves singing."
...Christine is both intrigued and horrified by the Phantom's dark, unspoken but
obvious desires, and when she faints, he drapes her limp, peignoir-clad body on a
bed shaped like a golden seashell. Later, she awakes and tries to remove his mask,
which clings to his face by no visible means. (Perhaps it's stuck on with pus?)
Her curiosity angers him, and in a rage, he sends her back to the land of the living.
Ooh! Punish me with kisses, why don't you?...Butler is supposed to be menacingly
sexy, but he reminds me of nothing so much as the bland, waxy Lotharios
you used to see in bad perfume commercials of the '70s....But Schumacher is more
like a Humvee than a director. He barrels ahead with reckless disregard for his
actors' capabilities and limitations -- all he seems to care about are the look of the
thing and the scale. "The Phantom of the Opera" lasts about 629 minutes (or maybe
it's just 627), and it isn't over until the chandelier falls. If only we weren't left feeling
like its crushed, helpless victims, pinned under 1,000 pounds of cheap crystal."

This 'Phantom' doesn't sing
Daily News 12/22/04
"We couldn't have said that if the original phantom Michael Crawford had been brought back.
What Sean Connery is to the Bond series,
Crawford is to the Phantom of the Opera - the one and only.
If the filmmakers chose the Scottish actor Butler in hopes of
drawing a younger audience, they're likely to be disappointed.
...For all the expense and elaborate sets and costumes,
"Phantom" the movie is an oddly flat experience."

The Toronto Star 12/22/04
(The following reposted is excerpts but we used just about the entire piece as it ROCKED!)

"The celebrated chandelier takes its sweet time smashing down in the long-awaited screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom Of The Opera, waiting until near the end to make a climactic clamour.

The movie itself crashes to Earth long before that.

In attempting to update the story while also remaining true to its popular stage musical rendering, director Joel Schumacher commits the cardinal sin of choosing sex appeal over sincerity.

He rejected original stage Phantom Michael Crawford for the role of the Paris Opera spook of the title, reasoning that Crawford was too old to play a convincing lover at 62 — despite Crawford's youthful looks and his undisputed mastery of songs that sound ludicrous and too loud when not properly performed.

Crawford has been supplanted by Scottish actor Gerard Butler, an unskilled singer and largely unheralded actor who once haunted a Tomb Raider sequel. Butler's woeful lack of vocal chops is just one of his painful deficiencies. He's the eighth screen Phantom since Lon Chaney's 1925 silent-film original and he's quite possibly the worst. (And yes, I have seen the Freddy Krueger slasher version.)

Schumacher argues, unconvincingly, that the Phantom needs to be sexed up to appeal to contemporary audiences and to make Butler seem a more appropriate romantic foil for 18-year-old co-star Emmy Rossum (Mystic River), who plays Christine Daaé, the rising opera diva and object of too much male attention.

Butler's Phantom still calls himself a "loathsome gargoyle," but he is really just a pretty boy with a skin infection, as evidenced by his skimpy mask revealing a mostly handsome face. In making him only slightly less shaggable than Patrick Wilson's Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, the gentleman opera patron who jousts for Christine's affections, Schumacher reduces the love dilemma to its most ridiculous terms.

The story has been robbed of its raison d'etre, which is to dramatize the yearning of unrequited love, the cruel vagaries of fate and the shallowness of human behaviour, where people pay only lip service to the notion that beauty is only skin deep. Weirder still is the lack of anything truly sexy in this hormone-fuelled endeavour. This Phantom is all phoreplay and no phun. Phancy that.

One would have thought after Schumacher destroyed a lucrative comic-book franchise with Batman & Robin — a kitschy travesty memorable for its leather fetish wear — that he would never again be handed a big budget and free reign to indulge his inner Liberace. Schumacher should only be allowed to make small movies with strong actors, like the Colin Farrell-starring Tigerland and Phone Booth that helped restore his lost lustre.

But Lloyd Webber apparently dotes on the man, having fallen for the director's earlier exercise in grotesque behaviour, The L