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Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera
Warner Bros.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera reviews


8.4

based on 39 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 355 votes
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FILM:

MPAA 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.

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:	DVD: May 3, 2005 Theatrical: December 22, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	143 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / UK

Nominated, Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, Best Original Song - Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy (Rossum), 2005 Golden Globe Awards; Best Breakthrough Performance by an Actress (Rossum), 2004 National Board of Review

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.

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.

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.

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.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Scotsman Gerard Butler does a fine job as the charismatic, ghostly character.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

What the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The result isn't liberated from the stage; it's trapped, with waxworks literalness, onscreen.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Flamboyantly over-the-top, visually kinetic.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

The acting and crooning are sadly uneven, making this a shaky comeback vehicle for the screen musical.

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."

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.

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Combines fingernails-on-blackboard audio agony with bamboo-under-fingernails physical torture.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Crashing chandelier, crashing bore.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Phantom still an auditory lobotomy.

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.

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.

Dallas Observer Bill Gallo

Runs two hours and 20 minutes and plays like 10 days in the county jail.

Slate David Edelstein

Made for the most excruciating two-and-a-half hours I've ever spent in a theater.

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 355 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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.

Katie gave it a7:
The movie helps the audience graps the play a little better because of the way they moved scenes around. But you can't compare a movie to the play. when you are in the opera house watching the play it feels like you are in the opera house that the Phantom of the Opera is taken place in. The Phantoms voice makes your hair sticks on end...and you too fall in love with the phantom. The movie gives the viewers none of that.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera Warner Bros.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera
Warner Bros.