What even Christine doesn't know is that this is actually a disfigured man living in the catacombs and sewers beneath the opera house, whose inhabitans refer to him in nervous whispers as the Phantom of the Opera (Gerard Butler). What nobody knows is that she has been receiving lessons from an unseen tutor, her "Angel of Music". The basic story is as familiar as it gets: young opera singer-in-training Christine Daae (Emmy Rossum) is able to pinch hit on the night of a grand gala at the Paris Opera (the fictional Opéra Populaire in the musical), when the stormy prima donna Carlotta (Minnie Driver) decides to pitch a hissy fit, and wins an enormous success. That material, of course, is one of the most popular stage musicals in the history of the medium, adapted from Gaston Leroux's 1910 romantic horror novel, which had been translated into Lord knows how many movies by the time Schumacher's version came along. Schumacher had been invested in this project for years before it was completed - I can't imagine that he just didn't give a shit about the material.
The cynic might say that the filmmakers knew they had an enormous pre-sold fanbase, and simply didn't need to care about doing a good job but I legitimately don't want to be that cynical. Love or hate the source material, the fact remains that The Phantom of the Opera is nowhere near the movie it could have been, committing one unforced error after another on its way to becoming one of the damned sloppiest major musicals of contemporary times. Yet it's not enough to say " The Phantom of the Opera ('04) sucks because The Phantom of the Opera ('86) sucks, and Andrew Lloyd Webber is a farty toot-head".
And yet I still found myself sitting there opening weekend, duty-bound to see if there was anything in the sprawling concoction heaved up by Joel Schumacher, a filmmaker uniquely devoid of a sense of proportion or fear of being thought tacky, that could make me believe again in the transporting power of the music of the night. I'm not sure when or how it ended, exactly, but it was well before December, 2004, when at long last The Phantom of the Opera The Movie bombasted its way into theaters, 18 years after the musical had premiered. Like just about anyone born after 1970 who loves musical theater, I had my Phantom of the Opera phase. Wild, with thanks for contributing twice to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser.
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