Crank up the reverb all you want he simply doesn’t have the pipes. But his breathy sprechstimme, overamplified in a vain effort to evoke menace and charisma, clambers up to cringe-inducing climaxes. As the masked man, Gerard Butler twirls a mean cape. Brechtian alienation device? Baz Luhrmann-style pastiche? Homage to the star of Lord Lloyd Webber’s previous film? Who cares?įor the most part, the ensemble proves that films, unlike Broadway mega-musicals, aren’t cast-proof. The only mystery is why, halfway into the biggest production number, the dancers start voguing. If Bob Fosse had a recurring nightmare of being forced to stage a flamenco show in Vegas, this is what it would look like. In fact, the scariest thing here is the Phantom’s opera version of Don Juan (wait, didn’t Mozart write one already? Never mind). All the while, Schumacher keeps his camera gliding, tilting, swooping, falling askew, either to create an air of mystery or the better to see all the pretty setsand costumes. The Phantom’s subterranean lair gets a makeover, but the soprano’s first visit, a love duet aboard a gondola, now has all the romance of a Disneyland ride. They give the Phantom a new backstory, which belongs to the Elephant Man, who wants it back, preferably before David Lynch calls his lawyer. Following the movie-musical adaptation handbook, they reshuffle scenes, prolong laughably bad dialogue, and tack on the requisite Oscar-qualifying original song, but still keep the insufferable disco-kitschy title number. Schumacher, who co-wrote the screenplay with Lord Lloyd Webber, re-enacts the highlights of Prince’s staging, to no avail: Coups de théâtre-actors plunging into a dark abyss, candelabra rising from the mist-look run-of-the-mill onscreen. Sure, all the ingredients of camp are there (oh, the hubris!), but this isn’t a so-bad-it’s-good classic. Louder, longer, flashier than its predecessor, this Phantom‘s an overblown mess of ostentatious razzmatazz. Prince’s magic covered the show’s many flaws-thin plot, pedestrian lyrics, and schmaltzy derivative score-like so much mechanical fog. What little there is in terms of story-a shadowy figure who tries to lure an up-and-coming soprano away from the opera’s new benefactor-served merely as an excuse for Lord Lloyd Webber’s pernicious earworms. Say what you will of Harold Prince’s 1988 Broadway production, but there’s something irresistible about his stage wizardry. It’s emblematic of Schumacher’s super-size approach to the material. In the press notes, director Joel Schumacher dismisses it as “a huge municipal building with a bureaucratic feel.” So he built a bigger, gaudier soundstage opera house, with a larger, shinier product-placement chandelier. Rumors of an underground lake (nothing as mundane as a flooded basement) inspired Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera, which begat that other monument to excess, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s perennial tuner, starring a lighting fixture.įor the film version, however, the Palais Garnier was just too shabby. PicturesĬharles Garnier’s Paris Opéra stands as a monument to Second Empire excess: cherubs, caryatids, mosaics, 10 kinds of marble, six types of limestone, gold, onyx, turquoise, bronze-and that’s just the foyer. Go ahead-any of them! Whether we’re speeding through space, breaking through the ice on a frozen river, galloping on a chariot across the desert or running up the Asbru bridge chased by wolves…you’re still safe with me.Music of the trite: Chandelirious Opera stars Rossum and Butler photo: Warner Bros. Still not sold? Well, give one of these books a try. And I HATE it when writers are lazy and tacky and beat you over the head with some philosophical or theological point they’re trying to make, instead of just TELLING THE STORY. You’ll hold your breath, you’ll laugh, you’ll sit on the edge of your chair, you’ll stay up till two in the morning pinned to the page-and you might even cry. Yet, I can prove without a shadow of a doubt that WITHOUT ANYTHING risqué, you can still have the adventure of a lifetime between these pages. He is the deep foundation-you can FEEL Him.
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA LYRICS FAR TOO MANY NOTES CODE
Well-you might be terrified for the hero, because his arch-nemesis has him at gunpoint with his back to the river Thames, demanding that he hand over the code that could spell the downfall of Europe…īut you’ll never have to squint, worrying that the romantic scene is about to get FAR too steamy-or that, in a tirade, someone is about to spew a stream of obscenities that will make you want to shut the book and go take a shower. You don’t have to be afraid when you read my books.