Hadley Fraser and Sierra Boggess (Raoul and Christine in the latter production) also became huge favourites of mine afterwards. My favourite song in the musical - 'All I ask of you' - can show you the difference straight away, while in the movie having very little emotion and really not standing out at all (video left), in the 25th anniversary (video above) it gave me chills and stayed with me for weeks after I'd first seen it. Honestly, if you want to see the sensational 'Phantom of the Opera' please watch the 25th anniversary production at the Royal Albert Hall (a video link to the finale of this version is above) instead of the movie.
I'm going to stop now because this has become way too long, but I had a lot to say about this that annoyed me. But then, at times when he was supposed to be shouting for emphasis, he ended up either singing weakly or speaking the lines. And most annoyingly, he was shouting on the notes that were supposed to be big and powerfully sung. In the book, the main thing about the Phantom is his amazing tone and the wonderful quality in his voice, but with Butler he was just shouting the entire time. Gerard Butler was also clearly only cast for his looks - ironic since he's playing the Phantom. You would also think the singing would be better since they had the chance to perfect it in the recording rooms and could sing it a number of times, whereas in the stage show it's once or nothing - but, no, it really was bad. Her voice wasn't that great either, with absolutely no feeling coming through in the majority of her scenes. Most of the time I thought they were having the singing as background whilst she acted, but then I realised she was supposed to be miming.
It just wasn't there, he wasn't deformed at all, it just looked like he had a bad sunburn on half of his face - compare this to Ramin's deformity in the 25th anniversary and it becomes more obvious why Christine feels the need for Raoul's protection and love, which isn't really made obvious in the movie since, until the finale, Butler's Phantom is far more attractive than Raoul ever is.Ī little song from Ramin would have been especially welcome in this film since the singing was pretty awful, really - and the miming along with it terrible, particularly Emmy Rossum as Christine. Another major problem for me was the Phantom's deformity, if you can call it that. Incidentally, I'm very glad it wasn't because I found the movie plot so confusing, if I didn't know the story I would have absolutely no clue what was going on - this is probably true of when I watched the 25th as well but I don't remember being quite as confused back then. I should probably say, I started watching this film with an already biased opinion that the 25th anniversary performance of 'The Phantom of the Opera' would be better than this film - and it was - but I'll try to overlook this while I'm writing the review and look at the film as if it was my first experience of Phantom.