Phantom of the Opera

[scarylarrywolf]

For those of you who like the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical, looky what I found!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293508/

 

[Don'tLiveonMoon]

Oh, how cool! My brother just decided yesterday he's obsessed with "Phantom of the Opera" after hearing the soundtrack at school. It's funny, he's always hated musicals, but being in "Fiddler on the Roof" seems to have converted him. He liked that to begin with, but now he seems to have decided that musicals in general are cool. He'll be happy to hear about the movie.
Erin

 

[Dr. Bombay]

My sister LOVES "Phantom of the Opera" but has never seen it. She fell in love with it by watching this TV movie based on Gaston Lereaux's book. She does have the Andrew Lloyd Weber soundtrack, in a couple languages to boot, and she collects the music boxes that have been made by the San Fransisco music box company.

The musical is coming to Salt Lake this year and she is finally going to see it. She is so excited.

She's also excited about this movie. It opens the day before Christmas and she says it better be the best present ever because she doesn't want her vision of what the story is tainted.

 

[Krazedmuppet]

This was the best movie EVER!!! HIGHLY RECOMEND IT, the opening seen made me cry, really it was that good, so beautiful, so much talent, I saw it 3 times in the thaters in a row, I had another friend who saw it 3, one who saw it 2 and another who saw it 10, and thats boys and girls. the Filming of it was genious, Loved it, became one of my favs instantly, GO SEE IT! (I just bought it on DVD )

 

[DanDanStrawberry]

My DVD didnt work properly, and a homosexual deprived of Andrew Lloyd Webber isn't pretty...I assure you!!

 

[Beauregard]

I looooooooooooooved this moive! It is the most awesome film I have seen for a very, very long time. So beautifull, and stylish, and colorful, and musical!

 

[Krazedmuppet]

My DVD didnt work properly, and a homosexual deprived of Andrew Lloyd Webber isn't pretty...I assure you!!

Im am so lost by that comment....

 

[Beauregard]

Im am so lost by that comment....

Don't ask. My advice.

j/k

 

[Jinx]

At the risk of starting a riot, I HATED the film! Really, I thought it was the worst film I've seen in many years.

Phantom is my favorite obsession, and has been since 1987 when I first heard the cast recording. Yes, I'm one of those fanatics that gets upset when people refer to cast recordings as "soundtracks...

I have seen the show staged 15 times all over North America, including seeing Michael Crawford perform the title role. It really is a brilliant story, in the hands of the right director.

Joel Schumacher is not that director. My impression is that he saw Chicago and Moulin Rouge and decided that the show needed to have a nice, "modern" appoach to it, and that is the only reason I can possibly imagine for having people "Vogueing" during "Masquerade" (shouldn't that have died in the 80's anyhow?). Then during the Phantom and Christine's most intense duet "Past the Point of No Return" he filled the stage with all kinds of unnecessary masked people who added NOTHING to the scene and distracted from the important relationship...but no matter, climbing up onto the huge, unnecessary scaffolding-style set kept the scene from playing anyway.

But then there are the more important issues of the central characters. Emmy Rossum did an admirable job of trying to portray Christine, but quite simply she is too young yet to really play it to the maximum. Her voice is not yet mature enough to sing it, although I should think that in the next few years she'll be ready.

Patrick Wilson you would never guess to be a fine musical theatre actor because of the way Raoul was really wasted in the film. He's really much better than you'd think!

But the worst offender by far was Gerard Butler as the Phantom. WAY to sexy and WAY too confindent around Christine. No sexual tension at all, just sexuality, and the two must never be confused. Then after he is finally unmasked, it looked like a slightly more than moderate case of acne. I felt absolutely NO compassion for him, and in fact I had to fight guffaws of laughter at several points during the showing.

I did admire much of the look of the film, but it wasn't (nor should it ever be) enough to sustain the movie.

Well anyway, that's my opnion of it...

 

[The Count]

Whoa! The DVD's been released already? Guess I'll finally have a chance to watch it. My biggest fear was that I originally thought Antonio Banderas would be the Phantom, and that just made me puke internally. Then I get the news that it's not him, some other actor altogether. So I'm interested in seeing this film, for my monster afficionado status. And to see something by Joel Shoemucker I'm interested in seeing, especially since he's pretty much a hack director in my eyes after Batman 4.
Then again, I'll be watching this as iI watch pretty much everything else, basing my opinions on the dialogue and not the visuals given my blind batty eyes.
Oh well, guess I'll decide whether or not to watch this thing.