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Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera

Mixed or average reviews
Based on 39 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 358 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Musical | Romance
Written by:
Andrew Lloyd Webber (also stage musical)
Joel Schumacher
Gaston Leroux (novel Le Fantôme de L'Opéra)
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 22, 2004
DVD: May 3, 2005
Running Time: 143 minutes, Color
Origin: USA / UK
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for brief violent images
Starring Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Miranda Richardson, Minnie Driver, Ciarán Hinds, Simon Callow, and Victor McGuire
Joel Schumacher directs this screen adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical set in the Paris Opera House.
Also On Metacritic
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The cast is good, the score is sublime, the visuals are sumptuous and it speeds along with a delirious romantic power that, if you let it, can sweep you away.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
If you've been seduced by Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage version of "The Phantom of the Opera," you'll fall in love with the gorgeous, splendidly cast film.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Michael Dequina
The much-publicized decision to go "younger and sexier" with the casting--a move that turns out to pay off handsomely, enhancing and enriching the material.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
I am recommending a movie that I do not seem to like very much. But part of the pleasure of moviegoing is pure spectacle -- of just sitting there and looking at great stuff and knowing it looks terrific. There wasn't much Schumacher could have done with the story or the music he was handed, but in the areas over which he held sway, he has triumphed.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
Scotsman Gerard Butler does a fine job as the charismatic, ghostly character.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
Phantom, still running on Broadway after sixteen years, is a rapturous spectacle. And the movie, directed full throttle by Joel Schumacher, goes the show one better.
Read Full Review >Variety Derek Elley
Sumptuous pic version, which evokes the original show while working as a movie in its own right, is lit by a radiant, vocally lustrous perf by teenaged Emmy Rossum.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Phillip Kennicott
It's gorgeous nonsense to look at, and in director Joel Schumacher's hands, "Phantom" emerges as one of those queer works of art that actually improve somehow as they get tackier and more removed from the original.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Isn't just for music fans. It's more accessible than that, thanks to Joel Schumacher's bright direction and a few storytelling embellishments.
Read Full Review >Premiere Peter Debruge
Fans will cheer at Schumacher's faithful inflation of Webber's vision, which interprets all that pomp and bombast as if the show were some sort of overblown Vegas attraction.
Read Full Review >Empire Jo Berry
The end result, although entertaining and well-crafted, certainly isn't on the same breathtaking scale of, say, Alan Parker's epic "Evita."
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
What the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The result isn't liberated from the stage; it's trapped, with waxworks literalness, onscreen.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Maitland McDonagh
But beneath the bombast it's pure paste and tinsel and, robbed of the thrill of live performance, the show's deficiencies are glaringly apparent.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Sid Smith
Depending on your predilection, the movie version of The Phantom of the Opera is about as good - or as bad - as its phenomenally successful stage original.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
It's sometimes hard to tell the characters from the candelabra. This lavish screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is so chockablock with decorative detail the human figures are often competing with the decor for attention.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Ultimately, however, appreciation of The Phantom of the Opera will hinge upon your opinion of Lloyd Webber's skills as a composer.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Finally, you get down to the music, which is easy to take for the first hour, before it starts doubling and tripling back on itself, in an unnerving and seemingly unending spiral of repetition.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
With Lloyd Webber onboard not just as composer but also co-screenwriter and producer, the film seemed destined to stay true to its roots rather than attempt to transcend them.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The acting and crooning are sadly uneven, making this a shaky comeback vehicle for the screen musical.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Teen romance and operetta-style singing replace the horror elements familiar to moviegoers, and director Joel Schumacher obscures any remnants of classy stage spectacle with the same disco overkill he brought to "Batman Forever."
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
Watching the passionless Phantom, with its geriatric story-framing device, gooey dimestore romanticism and tawdry pop ballads about unrequited yearning, feels akin to dying and waking up in your parents easy-listening-radio hell.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Steve Davis
One can't help but wonder how much better this film would have played straight, without its characters in seemingly constant song. God help us if there's a film version of "Cats" in the works.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Combines fingernails-on-blackboard audio agony with bamboo-under-fingernails physical torture.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
This film "Phantom" takes everything that's wrong with Broadway and puts it on the big screen in a gaudy splat.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
An experience best likened to being battered by hurricane-force winds generated by an organ with all stops pulled permanently out.
The New Yorker Anthony Lane
We should not be surprised, then, if this bellowing beast of a movie looks and sounds like the extended special-edition remix of a Duran Duran video.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Jorge Morales
This Phantom's an overblown mess of ostentatious razzmatazz. Sure, all the ingredients of camp are there (oh, the hubris!), but this isn't a so-bad-it's-good classic. It's worse.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
The real problem with "Phantom" is the problem with Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals in general. It's a slow-moving orgy of lowbrow grandiosity that's as tedious as it is overblown and pretentious.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Dana Stevens
Lord Lloyd Webber's thorough acquaintance with the canon of 18th- and 19th-century classical music is not in doubt, but his attempt to force a marriage between that tradition and modern musical theater represents a victory of pseudo-populist grandiosity over taste - an act of cultural butchery akin to turning an aviary of graceful swans and brilliant peacocks into an order of Chicken McNuggets.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
Adding an additional layer of cheese to a project that already reeks hopelessly of Velveeta, Schumacher pumps up the empty spectacle, stranding his fetching-but-lifeless mannequins amid giant sets and overblown production numbers.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
In Schumacher's relentlessly arrhythmic and tone-deaf film, Gerard Butler plays the title role as if he were just plucked out of Monty Python's lumberjack chorus.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
It has a little something to irritate everybody. People looking for romance will find only cardboard lovers. People looking for a resounding musical will find it odd that the camera runs away from the lip-synching cast. And people looking for opera -- well, shame on you.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Bill Gallo
Runs two hours and 20 minutes and plays like 10 days in the county jail.
Read Full Review >Slate David Edelstein
Made for the most excruciating two-and-a-half hours I've ever spent in a theater.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It adds up to a truly taxing couple of hours: ham acting, visual noise, aural torture, elementary plotting and unconvincing emotions.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 358 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
David gave it a10:
This is, by far, my favorite movie of all times. The music is absolutely amazing, and all the actors/actresses did an outstanding job. I have to have seen it practically a million times, and I still get chills listening to the music, which I have the sound track of on my mp3 player, cell phone, computer, burned CD's for my stereo, et cetera. I literally listen to it all the time. But I love not just the music, but all of the elements that went in to making this masterpiece. As previously mentioned, the actors and actresses did an excellent job. Gerard Butler held so much emotion so realistically, and Emmy Rossum did an excellent job with regards to her portrayal of dependence to her father and the "Angel of Music." Patrick Wilson, Minnie Driver, Miranda Richardson, and Jennifer Ellison played their roles excellently as well. As a side note, by looking at Ellison's (Meg's) character, her entire costume, posture, and voice all match her character perfectly. I also love how every trap, et cetera, that the Phantom created for his labyrinth in the film would have been technically possible (if improbable) to have created in the time period in which the movie took place, with only the money he received from the opera. I was afraid that Schumacher would put impossible effects, such as the Mirror if it hadn't been shown to slide open, into the movie for effects purposed, but it was made clear that he did not. The only thing that came close to impossible in my opinion would have been the lit candles emerging from the "vast, glassy lake," however, after some research on my own part, I learned that the technology of using certain fossil fuels to accomplish that task had been around long before the time period of the movie. All-in-all, this movie is amazing and if anyone tries to dispute that fact, go and see the movie for yourself before succumbing to that belief.
Viggo S. gave it a0:
I always thought that Gerard Butler was straight, but i don't anymore. this movie is so boring, that it would kill a hamster. (In lovely memory of my hamster) the hold story doesn't make any sense.
Josh L gave it a2:
Ugh. The music isn't what bugs me. Its the fact that this attempts to be a musical drama that holds no dramatic interest. Schumacher is so interested in making his first good film that he focuses on everything asthetic and nothing human. I felt nothing thru the entire movie. There's no suspense at all. I had never read the original book or seen the play and I still managed to predict what happened next. Maybe if it attempted to be edgy instead of pretending while still remainng pretty harmless. Every man in this film is a little girl and the women just don't THINK! There is a talented cast that gets squandered by an overly sappy ending filled with pointless reprises (seriously? the Phantoms dramatic contemplative moment is to Masqurade? I laughed out loud) and anti-climactic confrontations. This gets a 3 simply because of the very talented Emmy Rossum who does all she can to save the movie and is also super hot. I see why the phantom is nuts for her.
Kendra P. gave it an8:
I really do like this movie! The songs are very inviting...Not to mention the opera house is so beautiful... i can't take my eyes off of the screen when the movie is playing it is a tear jerker! the only thing i hate is the end!
Ela B. gave it a10:
Due to the unremarkable critical reception and my little-to-no previous Phantom knowledge I was fully expecting to hate this film version but to my surprise I've fallen in love with it. The costumes and sets, whilst sometimes over-the-top are really stunning. Emmy Rossum is perfect as the painfully naive chorus girl and Gerard Butler swings brilliantly from intimidating to seductive to pitiful to downright evil as the Phantom and though he doesn't sing every note perfectly he more than makes up for that out of pure expressiveness. Although it has to be said the deformity could do with being more severe, seeing as Gerard still looks hot to me in the Final Lair scenes. Patrick Wilson (a very good actor in films such as Hard Candy and Little Children) does his best with the one-dimensional prince charming of the tale and does have a lovely voice (although his accent is painfully obvious), which is a perfect foil for Gerard's rougher, more sensual tones. However his and Emmy's lack of chemistry compared to her's with Butler leaves most women scratching their heads at how Christine could prefer Raoul. The end is heartbreaking, if you don't cry your tear ducts are malfunctioning.
POTOredrose gave it a10:
One of my favorite movies...Gerard Butler gave a very powerful and captivating performance and the entire cast did a great job !!
Guido gave it a1:
This is one of the worst, if not the worst flm I have ever seen. I can only ascribe the myriad of 10 ratings that this film has recieved to the brain damage of teh respective reviewers, or perhaps they were so abused as children that thye no longer can tell good from bad. This movie is criminally bad, a constipated, bombastic, kitsch, heinous, trainwreck of a film that is an embarrassment to articulate human beings. I gave it a 1 because I can imagine less pleasant experiences such as having boiling acid injected directly into my eyes whilst. I don't think my ears will ever recover.
