Joel Schumacher's screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera suffers the usual fate of being a terrible attempt at bringing a stage production to film. It not only suffers from miscasting nearly across the board, but from poor choices at adding or reworking plot elements that lead to confused storylines and a series of anticlimaxes throughout its 2 hour and 20 minutes of running time -- a laborious 2:20 it is as well, I might add.
The biggest casting error of all was the decision to use Gerard Butler in the role of The Phantom. As the cast sing all their own parts, his voice was not nearly up to the task of taking on Webber's pseudo-operatic score; plodding through the melodies sounding more like a bad 1980's glam metal singer than someone suited to the sounds of musical theater. Butler makes a complete hash of one of the musical's best and most recognizable songs, "Music of the Night," shouting and screeching out the high notes.
Patrick Wilson, who plays the true love interest of Christine (Emmy Rossum), was much more skilled vocally, but his portrayal of the character Raoul was so banal, one wonders why Christine would chose to fall in love with him over the obviously more intriguing, albeit deformed and somewhat mad, Phantom. Of the leading characters, it is Christine -- the beautiful young orphaned ballerina with whom the Phantom falls in love with and yearns for deeply -- who stands out in this production. Though she may not have the range or sing with the same authority of Sarah Brightman -- the original "Christine" from the 1986 London cast -- she sings with much charm and delicacy and hits all the high notes superbly. She also comes across as very believable in the role of the young, charming, yet slightly naïve Christine.
Where the film stumbles the most is in its attempts to rework the stage production into something more "suitable" for moviegoing audiences, such as the newly added rooftop swordfight between the Phantom and Raoul halfway through the film. Raoul somehow bests the "scary" and "menacing" Phantom, yet decides to let him go because Christine pleads with him, "not like this!" Even the famous chandelier scene is reworked, so that instead of being a tragedy where people are killed as the Phantom drops a chandelier upon an unsuspecting crowd, the scene is dragged out and ponderous and everyone underneath the chandelier is allowed to scurry away to safety. That PG-13 rating must be maintained, I guess.
Having seen The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway myself many years ago, I must admit that I have never fully understood the wide appeal of the production. I always preferred Les Misérables -- for both the story and the production. Recently, I have been able to identify somewhat with the character of the Phantom -- his isolation and ostracism, his sense of loss, his great passion for the woman he loves and the unrequited nature thereof -- so it is not hard to understand why French author Gaston Leroux's story has been so enduring over the years. This Andrew Lloyd Webber vision of that story, however, filtered through the eyes of Joel Schumacher is, in my opinion, one of the worst ways to experience it.
The Picture
For this Blu-ray Disc release, the film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.40:1 in a 1080p/24 VC-1 high definition transfer. The film has an intentionally soft look about it, with much indirect light and a gentle glow to it. This comes across as softness, which is certainly not aided in any way by Warner's low bitrate VC-1 encoding which has softened the resolution even further. There is a lack of clarity in both foreground and background detail. This gives the picture the look of a somewhat out of focus film as projected at a theater.
Although contrast and black levels are fundamentally good, there are a few brief moments where blacks wash out and very slight low-level grain becomes apparent in the shadowy areas. This is only jarring because Warner's transfer on the whole seems to have smoothed over all or most of the film grain, so that when any does appear it seems almost out of place. Saturation and flesh tones are somewhat subdued, but this has more to do with the filmmaker's intention than any trouble with the transfer. This Blu-ray Disc release certainly looks better than anything you will see on DVD, but overall a better job could have been done with this transfer given what can be accomplished on this format. It looks much too smooth; not very film-like at all and too soft.
The Audio
Unfortunately, there are no high resolution lossless or uncompressed PCM audio options provided on this release, which is unacceptable for a next-generation high definition format. What Warner provides us are English Dolby Digital 5.1 (640kbps) and French Dolby Digital 5.1(640kbps).
The English Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is excellent, making wonderful use of the surround channels through use of ample ambient effects and discrete sounds. These aid the overall mood of the mix and give everything cohesiveness. Dialog is well-placed, well-balanced and never lost in the passages with louder aural effects. The LFE is put to very good use, giving the mix a very solid and weighty yet never overbearing low end.
With all of that said, the 640kbps Dolby Digital codec never obtains the clarity, which PCM or the lossless codecs such as Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA can obtain. This is most apparent in the higher frequencies such as the string section of the score's orchestra or the cymbals where a definite harshness comes through in the transients. These aural artifacts are also apparent in the more limited dynamic range, so that in louder passages things start to sound cluttered and compressed. One scene in particular that emphasizes all of these flaws is the masquerade ball where the Phantom makes his appearance to present his opera. One can only hope that the studios increasingly do away with the use of these legacy audio codecs in favor of the superior lossless codecs or PCM now available on Blu-ray.
The Extras
Warner has not offered many extras on this release -- and all, as is typical thus far with their Blu-ray Disc releases, are in standard definition 480i/p. Most of the extras here are not worth more than one viewing, with the sole exception being the one deleted scene.
The extras on the disc include: "Behind the Mask: The Story of The Phantom of the Opera" which offers an in-depth hour-long documentary about the history of famous French author Gaston Leroux's story, its many adaptations through the years, and the creation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage adaptation; "The Making of Phantom of the Opera," a short behind the scenes look at the making of the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, "Theatrical Trailer," the original theatrical trailer for the film, "Deleted Scene," one deleted musical performance by "The Phantom" (Gerard Butler), and "Sing-a-Long," a behind the scenes montage of the cast and crew singing along to The Phantom of the Opera.
Final Thoughts
Joel Schumacher's film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera is not the worst stage-to-screen adaptation I have ever seen, but even still, the film falls short of the grandness it attempts to attain. Unfortunately, Warner's Blu-ray Disc release also fails in all regards. The video transfer is lacking in clarity, the audio is limited to a legacy low bitrate codec from the DVD era, and extras are few, offering nothing compelling enough to watch more than once.
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