Thanks (if that's the word) to the "revival" of the movie musical by way of Moulin Rouge and Chicago, the bombastic score of Andrew Lloyd Webber at long last reaches the screen, in a jewel-box production of flowers, candles, literal smoke-and-mirrors, under the direction of Joel Schumacher: an overstuffed and suffocating bore. (Mere boredom, moreover, becomes outright exasperation in the cemetery scene where the romantic hero, after a sloppily staged swordfight, lifts his blade from the Phantom's throat and lets him go, only to begin frantically plotting his capture in the very next scene.) None of the fulsome visual effects can match the little slip of a thing who goes by the name of Emmy Rossum, with her tightly woven mat of hair, her pillowy lips, her perpetually surprised eyebrows. If she made a few fans with Passionada, Mystic River, and The Day after Tomorrow, she should herewith make a few slaves. Broadway musical star Patrick Wilson, meanwhile, following his impressive screen debut as Travis in The Alamo, proves to be strangely bland in his own element. And Gerard Butler is an uncharismatic Angel of Music (a nicer alias of the Phantom), but at least his habitually noisy nose-breathing gets drowned out in the din. Miranda Richardson, Minnie Driver. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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