The Phantom Of The Opera

-- movie was spectacular in some ways and incredibly disappointing in others. Props, first and foremost, to whoever decided to block the scenes in such a way that the mise en scene still felt like a musical while making use of the unlimited space and angles of film. Kudos also the choreographers, costume and set designers, and for that matter most of the technical staff (if anything, I was expecting the film to fail because of production since the performers already had a lot to work with). As it turned out, all my gripes were with the singing and acting. It seemed like J. Schumacher was making a special effort not to get any A-list stars in the show - which is all well and good, but the least he could have done otherwise was find people who can sing. Gerald Butler's voice was a disaster - all his sound comes from his windpipe and he mangled the high A in Music of The Night so badly that I'm suprised that Michael Ball has not already hunted him down and killed him (his career, incidentally, is already dead, as evidenced by his resplendent recent roles in Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life and Michael Crichton's Timeline.) Minnie Driver as Carlotta was just...wrong, and Emmy Rossum, though tolerable as Christine (I suppose) is not a patch on Sarah Brightman and her glittering transcendence when it comes to hitting the high high E at the end of the title song. (Mercifully, God or someone else decided to intervene and nix the original casting choice of Katie Holmes. Ugh.)

The experience was not improved by incessantly-beeping pagers and audience members who thought it necessary to clap at the end of every song (seriously: who are these people?) Fortunately, the theater was only about a third full, the rest of the movie-going population having decided that Meet the Fockers was the obvious choice for where their $8.50 should be spent.

For all that, if you're Andrew Lloyd Webber's bitch (like I, unfortunately, am: where do I sign up for rehab?), it is probably still worth a watch.