Opening reels stick closely to the show as, in 1919, an auctioneer (Paul Brooke) sells off knickknacks in the crumbling, dusty auditorium of Paris’ Opera Populaire, and the aged Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny (Patrick Wilson, convincingly aged), buys a music box with special memories. More Gotham City-like darkness would have helped punch up the screen presence of this 19th-century Gallic Batman.

Although thesp Gerard Butler has a considerably deeper, more resonant voice than Phantom stage originator Michael Crawford, it’s rarely matched by an appropriately stygian atmosphere.

Schumacher further softens the horror aspects, not only in the Phantom’s mask (now hardly larger than an eye-patch) and scarred face (now little more than a bad acne attack) but also in the darkness of his soul.

(Only other pic version in such a yearningly romantic vein is Ronny Yu’s luscious Sino “The Phantom Lover,” starring the late Leslie Cheung and catchily scored by Chris Babida.)

Both seem to have faith in the basic material and nothing to prove beyond it: The music’s the thing here and, apart from a few structural tweaks and richer settings for the action, neither director nor producer mess with success.Īs the umpteenth adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s baroque novel, Lloyd Webber’s musical was notable for discarding most of its horror-movie legacy (from Lon Chaney’s classic 1925 silent to Dario Argento’s 1998 gorefest) and turning the “Beauty and the Beast” theme into an operatic meller grounded in its legit setting. The combo of a technically experienced film director (Joel Schumacher) with little background in theater and a legit producer-composer (Andrew Lloyd Webber) with little experience in cinema works remarkably well.

New phantom of the opera movie