[flippyshark]

Well, for what it's worth, I'm a heterosexual guy (in my late thirties), and I liked the ALW Phantom on stage, quite a bit, really. Now, the movie? I'm really torn, because there are things I liked about it, and I generally want to be a booster for musical films. But there are some staggering missteps in this movie.

Exxagerated and hyper-real, it used its stylistic choices as an excuse for bad plotting and staging. (One horrid example - during one of the best songs, "Past the Point of No Return," the main characters are completely upstaged by clusters of black-clad dancers gyrating around in what looks like bad wanna-be Martha Graham style. And what was with the "Vogue" posturing during the Masquerade?!?)

So, the movie wants to have it both ways - to be a tear jerking romantic classic, and a highly stylized fanastmagoria. But it's too silly for the former, and not nearly delirious enough for the latter. Alan Parker might have made good on a more straight-forward version, and Ken Russell would have been the man to bring us an energetically lysergic take.

I will probably enjoy having this on video as an imperfect but serviceable record of the play, but as cinema, I doubt it will win many people over.

(I sure hope that Les Mis is made into a much better film than this, if it ever gets made at all.)