589: Phantom of the Opera (2005)
This week we inaugurate a musical month with the music of the night, and its playing slightly flat. This week the Myopia crew goes down into the Paris sewers for Joel Schumacher’s 2005 film of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s mega-musical. Gerard Butler plays a Phantom who sings like he’s yelling at a rugby match. His “hideous deformity” looks a lot like a bad sunburn. Emmy Rossum spends most of the movie looking hypnotized, and Patrick Wilson’s Raoul has the best hair in 19th-century France and charges into every scene on horseback. Minnie Driver steals the show as Carlotta, and someone else does her singing. We also take on the chandelier, an underground lair with more candles than a Bath & Body Works, and the movie’s lack of any real interest in fire codes. It’s 143 minutes of capes and organ music, and some of it is in black and white. Grab your Punjab lasso and come sing along. Just don’t take a seat in Box Five.
How will Phantom of the Opera hold up?
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Screenplay by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher (based on Lloyd Webber’s stage musical and Gaston Leroux’s novel)
Produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Cast
- Gerard Butler as The Phantom
- Emmy Rossum as Christine Daaé
- Patrick Wilson as Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny
- Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry
- Minnie Driver as Carlotta Giudicelli (her singing was dubbed by Margaret Preece)
- Ciarán Hinds as Richard Firmin
- Simon Callow as Gilles André
- Jennifer Ellison as Meg Giry
- Victor McGuire as Ubaldo Piangi
- Kevin McNally as Joseph Buquet