Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera

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.