Finally watched the 2004 Phantom movie.

[betweensunandmoon]

It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible. It could have been better, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Things I did:

-Yelled "Open your mouth!" at Emmy during "Think Of Me"
-Found the Phantom-kills-Buquet scene just as awesome as I remembered it
-Cried during "All I Ask Of You"
-Burst out laughing during the sword fight
-Squealed every time there was an R/C moment
-Squealed at wet, tied-up Patrick
-Missed Christine mouthing "I love you" to Raoul, so I kept rewinding the DVD until I saw it

Comments

[igenlode]

It isn't as bad as anti-movie fans would have you believe (I've seen comments like 'the set is obviously too small' and 'this is just incompetent film-making'; well, I've seen an awful lot of films, most of them far older than this one, and I didn't find it 'obviously' poor quality). The singing sounds fine in context, although it is clearly different when compared side by side with recordings from stage performers.
Patrick Wilson's hair is weird and pointless, and some of the plot changes (like the infamous 'ballet dormitories' and the Phantom becoming fixated on Christine when she was a small child -- and just when was she supposed to have met Raoul, if she was an orphan living in the Opera House?) appear to have been put in there for the benefit of a cool shot in a single scene without considering the ramifications. And it's very odd that with all the special effects potential offered by film they made such a mess of getting the Phantom's deformity across (according to the behind-the-scenes footage, they did put a lot of work into the makeup -- apparently it just doesn't show up properly in the lighting of the scene as shot!)

But you wouldn't expect this to be the film that was rsponsible for so many teenage girls declaring that they hated Raoul and couldn't stand the thought of R/C, given the amount of extra heroism they went around adding in to Raoul's character... presumably it's the attractions of the youthed-up Phantom as played by Gerard Butler that are to blame :-p