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windamgirl
Reviews
The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
My heart hurts!
I have seen the stage performance of Phantom six times, so I was understandably ecstatic when I heard that the film was finally, after almost fifteen years of anticipation, being produced. I had also liked Emmy Rossum in the Day After Tomorrow, although she looks about 25 to me and thus a bit too old for Christine. But I was prepared to let the age thing roll off my back.
Unfortunately, I was not prepared to let the utter lack of anything remotely redeemable about this production roll off my back.
The original novel by Gaston Leroux was a searing portrait of the world of the theatre at the turn of the century, filled with every bit of detail you could wish for. The Phantom, in turn, was a character so vividly painted by Leroux that every time I read the book I fell in love with him all over again. After all, he is supposed to be the Angel of Music.
Apparently no one attached to the film seemed to realize this, as the Phantom in the movie was simply twisted and creepy and not once did I think, "Sod-all, I'd take a midnight ride through the dark sewers with you and love you forever!" At no point in the film did the humanization of the Phantom as a tortured, brooding artistic genius come to life the way that it does in both the book and the stage version. Plus, really, if Butler couldn't hit all the notes, you'd think that they would lower the key. And the mask was wrong. And Gerard Butler is freakin' hot until he takes the mask off, revealing a mass of deformities -- only someone in script supervision didn't pay attention, because that mask would SO NOT cover all of the prosthetic ugly-face stuff they put on him.
Raoul was a little prick in the film, too. I mean, he's a prat in the stage version, but in the film I didn't feel sorry for him at all. And the end -- I'm sorry, WHAT? Let's just change the ENTIRE POINT of the story by changing the end? What were they thinking? I am so disappointed in this attempt. Except for Minnie Driver, who can't ever do anything badly because she's so awesome, this movie stank the big one. Seriously, I have to wonder if AL Webber isn't going a bit dodgy in the grey matter, if he allowed this to happen to his greatest work.
Perhaps if Schumacher had spent a little more time trying to put the life into the characters that is present in the stage version, instead of just worrying about their singing, I wouldn't have had to suffer almost three hours of wonderful music but crap storyline, mannequin acting, the absence of characters I might have been able to give a flying sod about, and the sad, sad experience of walking away from seeing Phantom of the Opera without being completely in love.
And then, the Golden Globe nominations. I have now lost all faith in whoever it is that decides THAT. They must have fallen asleep and dreamed they were seeing a good film, because I don't know how they could have got 'Golden-Globe-worthy' from the bollocks I saw.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
who greenlighted this crap?
Seriously, if not for Paul Bettany, this movie would be right up there with Glitter and Gigli. I'm still trying to figure out how I was supposed to care about anyone else in this movie. I wanted Crowe to lose a limb or at least fall overboard or something.
Plus, even though Paul Bettany saved the film from total failure, he was playing a thinly disguised Charles Darwin, who is reality a) made his voyage on the HMS Beagle in the 1840s (way later than the movie) and b) did his studies on ecological adaptations of the beaks of finches, not flightless cormorants.
The big flaws are too many story lines, too much Crowe, not enough Bettany, lots of actors that can't enunciate, and lack of character development for Crowe's character or the secondary surgeon (Higgins?) or the "Jonah" of the ship. Maybe if the writers/director/actors had made me care, i wouldn't have spent the last hour and a half of the movie hoping for Moby Dick, Jaws, or a combination.
Rose Hill (1997)
movie or book?
If you've read the book, don't watch this movie.
And if you're thinking about watching the movie, read the book instead.
I was completely disappointed in this adaptation, which seems to have retained only the names of the characters and the fact that Mary Rose was found as a baby by the brothers (although the more specific details of this have been altered as well). All I could think while watching this travesty was, a) Apparently the screenplay writer read the back copy of the novel and not Garwood's actual book and b) Thank god for Jennifer Garner and Justin Chambers (the only apparent acting talent in the movie), otherwise I'd shoot myself right now.
By the end of the movie, I was trying to figure out how Julie Garwood even allowed her name to be anywhere in the same universe as this film. I would probably have felt about ten thousand times better if this was done independent of the book, since it has practically nothing in common. And I would have been much less freaked out when Cole and Adam die (uh, yeah, in Julie Garwood world they get their own novels) and waaaaaay less weirded out when Harrison, Mary Rose's boyfriend/husband in the book shows up as her brother in the movie.
Okay, really, the message here is just read the freaking book. Pretend the movie never happened.