Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera

I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music. It’s talky, singy junk that has no melody, featuring the most banal lyrics this side of the last Styx album. This musical is just about the goofiest one he has managed to write, a strange adaptation of the cool Lon Chaney movie. So it is with great surprise that I actually like the film a little bit. Even more surprising is that one of the film’s major strong points is the direction of one Joel Schumacher, perhaps my least favorite director on the planet. He proves himself a maestro of junk, putting forth a film that is beautiful to look at and featuring a tremendous performance from Emmy Rossum. She does all of her own singing, and she’s pretty incredible. Gerard Butler proves to be an underwhelming choice for the Phantom—Antonio Banderas should’ve played the part—but Patrick Wilson is a little better as Rauol.