We saw PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: The Movie. Very weird. Not an epically bad movie, not an epically good movie, not a plain ordinarily good movie, just kind of lame and overdone with just enough flashes of quality to make you sad that whoever had the isolated good ideas wasn't in a position to have more of them. I rather like the bookend story, for a change. The age makeup on Miranda Richardson and Patrick Wilson is most convincing and effective. The Opera House set is very nice indeed, which is a good thing because it is a set you will see a lot of. You can feel them saying: We spent millions on this damned set, and we're going to shoot in every damned inch of it, if it makes sense or not!
I have an odd relationship with this material. I saw the original
Broadway cast when the show first opened, and thought it was a good tight production except for the actress playing Christine, who sang prettily but didn't act the role terribly well. I saw the show for the second time this past summer, and thought it was a tired worn out loose production except for the actress playing Christine, who sang very prettily and acted the role extremely well.
The film has one weird element that it shares with EVITA: THE MOVIE. Whenever anyone starts singing, the film cuts away from the singer to the sung-to, or to a shot of whatever statue happens to be near (and you can bet there's always a statue standing at the ready to be cut away to), or to a shot of the singer/s standing about 25-30 feet away, with their faces obscured by drapes/shadows/scenery/statues etc. It feels like it was done to make the film more easily dubbable into other languages, and if that's the case couldn't they have started by dubbing in a better singer for the Phantom for us English-
speaking audiences?
The editing never hits the Edited By Cuisinart nadir of Rob
Marshall's CHICAGO but it does get annoying. In one scene, the yummy Patrick Wilson, playing Raul, sings his big love song with Christine on the roof, the actually very pretty "All I Ask Of You." Mr. Wilson does a lovely job with the first few bars of the song, and it works splendidly until Shumacher cuts away to a very long, slow shot of a statue that slowly reveals that the Phantom is hiding behind it. Not content with doing it once, Shumacher constantly does this for the rest of the song, back and forth between the couple singing and the Phantom suffering. You want to scream out: YES, WE KNOW HE'S THERE, GODDAMNIT!!!!!
Similarly, in the graveyard sequence, as Christine sings one of the better songs in the score, "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again," Shumacher constantly cuts away to show me statues of angels, for no apparent reason. It distracts from the actress' performance (which may of course be the idea, as she never really registers much in the way of emotion, although she sings very prettily), and just gets annoying. It's very simple: I wanted to watch the pretty girl, the ugly guy, and the pretty guy sing. And Shumacher flat out refuses to let me. He values art direction over emotion: he's all about rubber nipples on the Batsuit.
Spoiler In This Paragraph Only, BEWARE: And there's some just plain awful storytelling, too. During one particular scene about halfway through, the Phantom is completely at Raul's mercy. Christine is standing nearby, and says, "No, Raul! Not like this!" and Raul lets the Phantom go. I'll repeat that: RAUL LETS THE PHANTOM GO!!! Raul and Christine exit, and the Phantom, rather ungratefully I think, declares "war" upon them both. And to top it all off: the next time we see Raul, the first words out of his mouth are: "We have to catch the Phantom!!" He has to catch the Phantom that he just let go. No, I am not making this up.
Miranda Richardson proves that she is one of the greatest actors ever to draw breath, in that she actually manages to give a delicately understated performance of great tenderness and intelligence in a Joel Shumacher movie. If the film is worth seeing, it is worth seeing to see what one single great actor can do in the worst of circumstances. Although I'll admit that her French accent seemed rather bizarre, only because she is the only person in the film to try one. But overall, Richardson proves that there are in fact no small parts, only small actors. I'm a great fan of Patrick Wilson's: he's a terrific leading man. He doesn't come off as experienced enough as a film actor to be able to transcend Shumacher's Awfulness. Minnie Ryder leaves no scenery unchewed, I'll bet that fully half the film's budget had to go to removing her tooth marks after every take. Of course, we'll never know what great performance moments from the rest of the cast hit the cutting room floor at Shumacher and Lloyd Webber's command. And Gerard Butler does what I came to realize was actually an Antonio Banderas impression: foreign accent, slicked back hair and all. Joel Shumacher works his special magic on the Phantom: for a character who has lived most of his life in the bowels of the Opera House he certainly seems to have had regular visits from a cosmetic dentist and a personal trainer, and he seems to be one of International Male's best customers.
With Joel Shumacher as director, there was absolutely no way that the film could be good. None. Nope. I was hoping for the SHOWGIRLS for the New Millennium, with the monumentally tasteless Joel Shumacher at the helm. Alas, Shumacher has double crossed me, and given me an ordinary bad movie instead of a truly remarkable piece of Unforgettable Crap. He can't even be depended upon to fail spectacularly.
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Thomas Pynchon, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick
My blog: http://www.roscoewrites.blogspot.com/
Updated On: 12/29/04 at 07:33 AM
