|
COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
What does it take to shake a movie fan? Whether we are critics or bug-eyed buffs, so many of our evenings are spent in the company of crimes and misdemeanors that we can hardly be blamed for developing the hide of a pachyderm. Just occasionally, something slips through--a thin shudder of monstrosity, enough to remind us of what it means to be afraid. And so it came about, this week, that I gazed at a black screen and saw words so calamitous that they might have been written in my own blood: "Screenplay by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher."
It couldn't be any better, really, could it? The pairing of the tasteful genius behind "Batman & Robin" and the English peer who paid homage to T. S. Eliot by having grown men prance around wearing jerkins knitted from tabbies: what flash of fate brought these two together to merge into a seamless whole? The title of their shared project, which Schumacher directed, is not "The Phantom of the Opera" but "Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera," which, if misheard, might lead viewers to suppose that they could corner the Phantom, peel off his disguise, and reveal the features of none other than His Lordship. Now, that would be scary.
The plot is impressively free of anything that does not smell of unpasteurized melodrama. The bulk of it takes place in 1870, in Paris--ah, Paris, so overwhelming in its impact that while some of its blessed citizens remember to speak English with a French accent, others do not. We are at the Opera, where everything and, if possible, everybody that can be gilded with gold has received the necessary treatment. The new patron is the Vicomte de Chagny (Patrick Wilson), who is long...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
