I am a 70-year-old woman, and I have loved musicals all my life. I've been familiar with the Phantom story since seeing the Claude Rains version in the '40s. I saw Lloyd Webber's "Phantom" onstage in Phoenix (not the original cast). I've had the original cast album since it first came out.
This movie is the first screen adaptation of a stage musical I can remember in which no songs were left out, no plot was changed, and no locale was moved because somebody thought movie audiences wouldn't "get" the original, or because it was too long, or some other insulting reason. It shows what magic can be made when an artist insists on controlling the reincarnation of his work. I liked it better than the stage show because everything was bigger and opened up. There were touches of humor, badly needed. The "Masquerade" scene was brilliant, and the Phantom himself was mesmerizing. The whole spectacle (and there's nothing wrong with spectacle, despite what the critics seem to think) was incredibly romantic and thrilling, the way many movies used to be and very few are now.
This is not the sixth or seventh film version of "The Phantom of the Opera." This is "Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera," a totally different and superior animal.
This movie is the first screen adaptation of a stage musical I can remember in which no songs were left out, no plot was changed, and no locale was moved because somebody thought movie audiences wouldn't "get" the original, or because it was too long, or some other insulting reason. It shows what magic can be made when an artist insists on controlling the reincarnation of his work. I liked it better than the stage show because everything was bigger and opened up. There were touches of humor, badly needed. The "Masquerade" scene was brilliant, and the Phantom himself was mesmerizing. The whole spectacle (and there's nothing wrong with spectacle, despite what the critics seem to think) was incredibly romantic and thrilling, the way many movies used to be and very few are now.
This is not the sixth or seventh film version of "The Phantom of the Opera." This is "Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera," a totally different and superior animal.