After a visit to the Phantom's lair, the love triangle between young singer, suave dude and freaky genius plays out in tandem with the drama of the operas being produced and the Phantom's increasingly violent acts of obsession. When the Phantom (Gerard Butler) orchestrates her big break by scaring off the house diva, Carlotta (Minnie Driver), Christine becomes a sensation and draws the attention of the hunky Raoul (Patrick Wilson), a wealthy patron of the opera whom Christine had known as a child. Her violinist father had told her he'd send an 'Angel of Music' to guide and protect her after he died, she's taken this unseen tutor's training as a sign her father was watching over her. He's been secretly tutoring 16-year-old Christine (Emmy Rossum), an orphan who is living and working at the Opera as a chorister. For those 12 people in the world who haven't seen the stage show, The Phantom of the Opera is a musical based on Gaston Leroux's 1911 novel about a horribly disfigured genius/madman who lives beneath the Paris Opera House, here renamed the Opera Populaire. After watching this DVD and its featurettes a couple of times, my appraisal grew more charitable, though some criticisms remain. After seeing it in the theatre, I had a list of problems with the casting and limited vocal talents of some of the players and some of the story changes took away more than they added.

While I'm not one of those 'Phantom Phanatics', I have seen the show four times on tour and in Toronto and own the Original Cast Recording, so I went into this film adaptation with a favorable attitude about the source material and hoped to enjoy it.

Dvd phantom of the opera 2004