Release Date: December 22, 2004
Starring: Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Miranda Richardson, Minnie Driver, Ciarán Hinds, Simon Callow
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Written by: Joel Schumacher, Andrew Lloyd Weber
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (brief violent images)
I am not quite sure why Hollywood executives are interested in turning Broadway musicals into feature films, other than because they have a built-in audience, but if they are going to continue to do so, they should probably demand more imagination than the bare minimum that Joel Schumacher showed in his bland and unremarkable adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. Few changes -- and almost no major ones -- have been made to the story, the production values are weak for a major studio production, and the lead actors seem to have been cast for their looks rather than their talents. It is, at best, a decent companion piece to the stage version, a viable alternative for those who have neither the time, opportunity, or money to see it performed live.
This may seem a brutal verdict, but though The Phantom of the Opera is one of the world’s most widely seen musicals, its extraordinary popularity is, at this point, somewhat self-perpetuating. Andrew Lloyd Weber, who is responsible for the 1986 musical and also wrote the screenplay with Schumacher, has never been an extraordinary composer. He performs the same function on Broadway that Britney Spears does for the recording industry, distilling what should be complex art into simple, catchy pop tunes. Even in this film, you can still hear the mid-80’s synth-rock pulse that forms the backbone of the musical’s signature number, “The Phantom of the Opera.”
But even so, it’s hard to see how Schumacher could have failed to inject even a passing spark of life into the production. This is a timeless story of love, jealousy, and betrayal -- whose roots ultimately go back to Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel Le Fantôme de L’Opéra -- ripe for revitalization. Schumacher seems to have instead focused on targeting the picture at the same youngish audience that made the vibrant Moulin Rouge a big success at the box office. He has cast a trio of good-looking actors in the leads, but they have the flat charisma that is average even in the 22-minute universe of the WB television network. Moulin Rouge -- and Chicago, as long as we’re talking about recent stage-to-screen transplants -- soared with accomplished actors on board; Phantom, saddled with the unlikely lineup of Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, and Patrick Wilson, never gets off the ground.
The cast accounts for one of the movie’s few substantial changes from the stage musical, and also, ironically, one of its most ill-advised. The 35-year-old Butler plays the Phantom, a part usually given to an older actor, since the Phantom is supposed to be a surrogate father to the ingénue heroine Christine (Rossum). It’s clear that Schumacher wanted to play up the romantic rivalry between the disfigured Phantom and Christine’s pretty-boy love interest, Raoul (Wilson), but you can’t have one without the other. The Phantom’s possessive jealousy springs from his mentor-pupil attachment to Christine; without that, he becomes, as he is here, a deranged, operatic Batman, lurking in the rafters of the Opéra Populaire to enforce miscalculated measures of romantic justice.
When the movie begins, there are no rafters in the Opéra Populaire at all; the year is 1917, and the theater, set in the heart of a Paris that is only a fraction as lively as the one in Moulin Rouge, is in shambles. Then we’re whisked back in time to the 1870’s by way of the movie’s admittedly strong opening, as workmen raise the theater’s ornately restored chandelier to the ceiling and the familiar opening chords of “The Phantom of the Opera” ring out: at once, the Opéra Populaire is alive and well, filled with a teeming throng of cast and crewmembers in a frenzied dress rehearsal for a new production. When the company’s star, a tetchy diva named Carlotta (Minnie Driver, splendidly over the top), clashes with the theater’s new management (a comic pair played by Simon Callow and Ciarán Hinds), however, chorus girl Christine is thrust into the spotlight with the endorsement of the imperious ballet teacher, Madame Giry (Miranda Richardson). She is spectacularly successful in her first performance (though it’s hard to see why, given that Rossum’s personality appears to have been squeezed out of existence by her corset), thanks to the voice lessons she has been taking from the Phantom, whom she believes to be the spirit of her dead father. Then the Phantom learns that she is in love with Raoul, her childhood sweetheart and part of the new management team, and spins madly out of control as he realizes that he has increasingly little influence over her. But this potentially simmering love triangle is dead on arrival, thanks to the limp performances from the three leads.
Fans of the stage musical will recognize the storyline -- the only major change is that the famous scene when the Phantom crashes the Opéra Populaire’s chandelier has been moved from the middle to the end -- and all of the major numbers, like “Music of the Night,” “Think of Me,” “Masquerade,” “Angel of Music,” “Point of No Return,” and, of course, “The Phantom of the Opera,” are present. The action is largely confined to the interior sets of the opera house, which is unfortunate, because when the story moves outside Schumacher is forced to exert a little creative license. His best scenes are the flashbacks to the Phantom’s youth, perhaps because they allow him to explore darker material. Inside, however, he films with a stuffy sense of faux glamour that is very early MTV.
At his best, Schumacher would be an ideal director for Phantom, because his style is equal parts noir and camp, much like the story -- at times, it is almost a light satire of gothic romance. But the director appears to have been scared into submission, too afraid to take a chance on an unconventional adaptation of a popular, well known Broadway act. I think he would have fared much better with a non-musical version (it worked very well for the 1998 film of Les Misérables) because he could still have used the famous music in the score while freeing himself from the sometimes cumbersome vocals. No doubt he was encouraged by the critical and popular triumphs of 2002’s Chicago, another relatively unimaginative (but much better acted) stage-to-screen adaptation, to remain close to the source material. But adaptations are called adaptations for a reason. Even if he had failed, I would much rather have seen Schumacher mold the story into some new thing that takes advantage of the filmic medium than turning out more of what we’ve already seen somewhere else.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)