This Phantom's menace is the Phantom himself.
Comment
12/22/04
Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
33
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:163
Fresh:54
Rotten:109
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: The music of the night has hit something of a sour note: Critics are calling the screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s popular musical histrionic, boring, and lacking in both romance and danger. Still, some have praised the film for its sheer spectacle.
Theatrical Release:10-12-2004
Synopsis: Those who thought that smoke machines and cobwebbed candelabras were the stuff of Halloween parties and dance clubs need to think again. In Joel Schumacher's film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd... [More]
Starring: Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Minnie Driver, Patrick Wilson
Director: Joel Schumacher
Reviews for Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera
The movie version of Lloyd Webber's smash hit does to the music what the music did to the words and story: It distracts the mind and cajoles the eyes to the point that one doesn't really care that everything the ears are hearing is pure nonsense.
12/22/04
For those whose primary experience with musicals is on the screen, this melodramatic tale with the familiar soundtrack should hold substantial appeal.
12/22/04
Nuanced supporting performances by Simon Callow and Ciaran Hinds as the parvenus who've just bought the Opera and, especially, Richardson as the sly Giry, can't compensate for the vacuum at the top.
12/22/04
The film overflows with overkill, from the amped-up orchestra that constantly threatens to submerge the singers to the ornate silliness of each and every scene involving the Phantom.
12/22/04
It's a shamelessly over-the-top wallow in romantic obsession, and a thoroughly enjoyable one.
12/22/04
The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away.
12/22/04
The movie misfires as often as it connects.
12/22/04
Given the overall weakness of the material, director Joel Schumacher works beyond the call of duty to pull us into his musical fable.
12/22/04
If you join me in thinking Webber's Phantom is the most overblown, overrated musical ever, a lopsided victory of style over substance, you'll feel that way about Schumacher's film, because he's loyal to a fault to Webber's rose-tinted vision.
12/22/04
The songs simply have more impact when they are performed live, in front of you, for your benefit.
12/22/04
It was the '80s. You really had to be there. Preferably with low expectations.
12/22/04
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.
12/22/04
The falling chandelier, the signature moment of Phantom, has been moved from the end of the first act to the climax of the movie -- by which point non-devotees may need to be roused from their sleep by their companions.
12/22/04
Andrew Lloyd Webber's kitschy theatrical spectacle is now a kitschy theatrical movie, a mix of melodrama, horror, romance, mystery and melody heaped together into a cinematic smorgasbord, one heavy in starch.
12/22/04
A pleasant diversion, but it still runs behind Lon Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera and Claude Rains' The Phantom of the Opera.
12/22/04
Where's Homeland Security when you need it?
12/22/04
Schumacher has bravely taken aboard this dreck and made of it a movie I am pleased to have seen.
12/22/04
Top CriticPhantom has always been a spooky story filled with drama, suspense, romance, and horror. … until now.
12/22/04
It's a slow-moving orgy of lowbrow grandiosity that's as tedious as it is overblown and pretentious. Songs, scenes, dance numbers, lyrics and set pieces all blend together into an indistinct, ludicrously self-serious mush.
12/22/04
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