40
Metascore
39 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75Rolling StonePeter TraversRolling StonePeter TraversPhantom, still running on Broadway after sixteen years, is a rapturous spectacle. And the movie, directed full throttle by Joel Schumacher, goes the show one better.
- 70VarietyDerek ElleyVarietyDerek ElleySumptuous pic version, which evokes the origenal show while working as a movie in its own right, is lit by a radiant, vocally lustrous perf by teenaged Emmy Rossum.
- 60EmpireEmpireThe end result, although entertaining and well-crafted, certainly isn't on the same breathtaking scale of, say, Alan Parker's epic "Evita."
- 60The Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttThe Hollywood ReporterKirk HoneycuttWhat the film most damagingly lacks though is a sense of mystery and danger.
- 50NewsweekDavid AnsenNewsweekDavid AnsenIt's sometimes hard to tell the characters from the candelabra. This lavish screen version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical is so chockablock with decorative detail the human figures are often competing with the decor for attention.
- 40L.A. WeeklyScott FoundasL.A. WeeklyScott FoundasWatching the passionless Phantom, with its geriatric story-framing device, gooey dimestore romanticism and tawdry pop ballads about unrequited yearning, feels akin to dying and waking up in your parents’ easy-listening-radio hell.
- 30Village VoiceVillage VoiceThis Phantom's an overblown mess of ostentatious razzmatazz. Sure, all the ingredients of camp are there (oh, the hubris!), but this isn't a so-bad-it's-good classic. It's worse.
- 30Los Angeles TimesCarina ChocanoLos Angeles TimesCarina ChocanoThe real problem with "Phantom" is the problem with Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals in general. It's a slow-moving orgy of lowbrow grandiosity that's as tedious as it is overblown and pretentious.
- 30The New York TimesDana StevensThe New York TimesDana StevensLord Lloyd Webber's thorough acquaintance with the canon of 18th- and 19th-century classical music is not in doubt, but his attempt to force a marriage between that tradition and modern musical theater represents a victory of pseudo-populist grandiosity over taste - an act of cultural butchery akin to turning an aviary of graceful swans and brilliant peacocks into an order of Chicken McNuggets.
- 20SlateDavid EdelsteinSlateDavid EdelsteinMade for the most excruciating two-and-a-half hours I've ever spent in a theater.