PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 12/22/04)

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera may not be the most sophisticated of musicals, but seeing it on stage is a truly overwhelming experience, from the chandelier that comes swooping overhead to the enormous two-story staircase they roll out on stage. In his Botox-injected big-screen adaptation, director Joel Schumacher insisted on translating that same intensity to the screen, delivering a movie that's bigger, louder and even more baroque than the omni-popular stage show.

Fans will cheer at Schumacher's faithful inflation of Webber's vision, which interprets all that pomp and bombast as if the show were some sort of overblown Vegas attraction. His only major departure from the original seems to be in casting, opting for a younger Christine (played by the immensely talented Emmy Rossum, who was only 16 when cast) in the part originated by Webber's ex-wife and muse, Sarah Brightman, on the British stage.

Rossum is a luminous choice as the young ingénue of the Paris Opera, while Minnie Driver offers cunning comic delivery as her pompous stage rival, Carlotta. Schumacher's male leads, however, are far more troubling. The casting of Gerard Butler as the Phantom is inexplicable at best. The Scottish actor is far too handsome to be convincing as this broken gargoyle of a man, but too weak a singer to do the music justice. Patrick Wilson, so great in Mike Nichols' Angels in America miniseries, comes off as little more than an animated Ken doll as Raoul.

Of the four principals, only Driver doesn't sing her own part (though she is a talented vocalist and recently released her own album, Driver isn't trained as an operatic soprano). The others are presumably good enough, although the movie's soundtrack does little to improve on the multi-platinum original cast recording. Schumacher's direction feels similarly limited, missing the opportunity Alan Parker seized with Evita to deliver truly iconic images. The cinematic medium offers filmmakers the opportunity to cement each and every visual in the audience's minds, such that having seen the movie, they might never imagine the story told any other way.

Instead, Schumacher seems to squander every chance. The "Masquerade" musical number that overwhelms on stage is a flurry of unmotivated editing, and the dramatic impact of the stagehand's hanging is undermined by cross-cutting between the Phantom in the rafters and the performance down below. In another director's hands, the scenes on the rooftop, on the gondola, and in the cemetery (the latter might have been better left out of the film altogether) might have fueled the fantasies of teenage girls forever. Schumacher seems far more concerned with orchestrating his beautiful cast, sumptuous costumes, and lavish sets to give audiences who might not afford the Broadway show a taste of the experience, rather than defining it once and for all.

—Peter Debruge