Given the lack of towering presence from Butler, Schumacher should have forced the camera on these two as much as he could.
Schumacher frequently cuts away for reaction shots from Raoul, Christine’s suitor, supporting characters or company dancers. In an auditorium, our gaze would be cast solely on the Phantom as he worms his way into Christine’s brain with wooing vocals. There is an almost fatal lack of heat between the Phantom (Gerard Butler) and young singer Christine (Emmy Rossum) - although there is lots of humidity, given how her hair frizzes out when he sings to her. Visuals alone make the film entertaining, but Schumacher is unable to cast the same sort of seductive spell that theatrical productions of Phantom have woven for years. And the film’s homicidal grotesqueries, held over from Gaston Leroux’s source story, carry a memorable chill. In what could easily have been another camped-up calamity, he thankfully lets the astounding elegance of his production team’s accomplishments wash over. A troubling obstacle for any musical-to-movie transplant, let alone one as lavish and lauded as Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of The Phantom of the Opera, is if audience immersion takes hold on screen as it would on stage.ĭirector Joel Schumacher is a filmmaker traditionally known for a splashy style that stains much of his material.
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