Phantom of the Opera (2004 film)

Stephanie's Favourite Movies: The Phantom of the Opera

I dislike Joel Schumacher as a director, mainly because he ruined Batman. However, I liked his grandiose, spectacular take on the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's popular musical, The Phantom of the Opera.

I don't get all the critical hate for this movie, it's incredibly well done and is plenty romantic. This is also one of two movies that I have cried at in my young adult life. In the last 20 minutes of this movie, and one scene during the middle, I was absolutely sobbing my eyes out.

A huge shocker for me was that Gerard Butler was the Phantom and he actually did a surprisingly good job. I still stand by my opinion that a trained singer is needed for the role of the Phantom, but for an untrained singer, he did really well. In terms of the other singing, Emmy Rossum, Margaret Preece (Minnie Driver's singing voice), Patrick Wilson, and Miranda Richardson did quite well, seeing as three out of the four of them are trained singers. The music is absolutely fantastic and I have many of the songs on my Ipod.

In terms of story, it's told very slowly and the singing is far more superior to the dialogue, but I still enjoyed it, even though the pacing is incredibly slow. Gerard Butler is not a good actor, and I will always stand by it. This is the only film of his that I like, and that's not even that much due to him. He is quite possibly my least favourite actor ever, but he actually does okay in this.

I will continue with the obvious. Joel Schumacher and the set designers really showed the lavish extravagant style of 1880's high society France. I loved the visual style and spectacle of this movie. By far the best thing about the movie that wasn't the music and the only thing critics appear to like about this movie.

If you haven't seen this movie, you should definitely check it out. It's definitely a great movie for fans of the musical and for women if you're planning a movie night with some of your female friends and men who are fans of the musical. Just be warned, there are some genuinely sad scenes in this movie and if you cry at a lot of movies, you will definitely cry. All in all, a fantastic film.