First, the good news about Joel Schumacher's completion of the movie
project that began 15 years ago, a little number called officially "Andrew
Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera." As the studio notes proudly reveal,
Gerard Butler, who ended up with the title role, "TOOK SINGING LESSONS
ON THE SLY" when preparing for his audition with ALW Himself.  This was
shortly after he read the script, which "just blew me away." The fact
that the Phantom-to-be hadn't seen a stage production might have intensified
the experience.

Good News No.  2: the movie's beginning is impressive.  From a
black-and-white 1919 auction scene in the abandoned, run-down Opera,
color takes over as the place comes to life in its 1870 incarnation.
No.  3: Minnie Driver is funny as La Carlotta, a nasty Italian diva with
a strong Russian accent.

After that, there is no good news.  Or news.  It's the same damn thing
over and over again, for more than two hours.  Deadly.  One trite, sugary,
cheap ditty, sung over and over again, either as "The Music of the Night,"
or as a love duet, or as narration.  Ta-ta-ta-ta-dum!  Over and over.
Again.  Somehow, it's not nearly as irritating in the theater, but without
intermission, and right in your face, it's intolerable...  unless you've
been rendered catatonic, a state most of the preview audience appeared
to have reached in less than an hour.

Those singing lessons didn't pay off.  Amplified, dubbed and
hyper-engineered, Butler's "singing" is still between humming and
shouting.  Driver, even in the travesty role, sings well.  Amy Rossum
(who once acted as the young Audrey Hepburn, even if she looks like a
mix of a young Kiri Te Kanawa and a "mature" Jennifer Beal) walks through
the movie with a steady expression of a doe, a doe, a female deer, caught
in the crosslights.  She warbles sweetly.  Patrick Wilson is Raoul.

The lovers have less expressive faces than the half-masked Phantom - a
fact, not a hyperbole.  There is one real actor in the film (besides the
Minnie) - Miranda Richardson, as Madame Giry; is puzzlement: she has a
French accent, but nobody else does.  Driver's Italian is from Siberia,
the Americans sound semi-British refined.  Simon Callow, who otherwise
*is* an actor, appears lost at sea here, as one of the new owners.

Authenticity to the fore, the real subterranean river under the real
Opera Garnier was discarded, in favor of creating "a waterworld worthy
of the Phantom's lushly dramatic hideaway." It's not bad, and if the
ta-ta-ta-ta-dum!  didn't leak through industrial-strength earplugs, the
views of "the lair" might have been of interest.

Spoiler coming: the chandelier ("from the world-renowned crystal
manufacturer Swarovsky...  20,000 pieces...") does crash.  And, while
you may not fully appreciate this, the sound of the impacted audience
is the ACTUAL SOUND OF THE AUDIENCE in the London theater, where "Phantom"
played last April.  (More precise background: the audience was asked to
stay behind after the play and recreate the horror the horror as the
sound effect for the movie.  It's the actual audience, but not the actual
sound, you see.)

Unlike the stage play's impressive settings for "Hannibal," the movie
doesn't do much with the faux operas in "Phantom" (until the final "Don
Juan Triumphant").  One good thing, however, is the sound engineering,
which makes all dialogue and even the lyrics understandable.  Too bad
once you understand what's being said or sung, it won't make any difference.
It's just the muuusic of the niiiight...

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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