Unfortunatley, this just wasn’t quite enough of a train wreck to be the full on camp classic I was hoping for. Oh, don’t get me wrong. . .there’s some cheesy 80s synthesized drums, horrible high notes and trap doors trap doors trap doors! But. . .sadly, this movie was a little bit too. . .I dunno, good I guess is the word. Meaning it succeeded quite a bit on an unironic level. The problem is, the unironic telling of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom doesn’t interest me that much. For that to’ve worked, it shoulda been 90 minutes, not 145. (They could cut plenty of songs. . .it’s all the same 3 melodies over and over again anyway.) Also — Minnie Driver is more hideous than ever. What does anyone see in her? Emmy Rossum, though, is a stone cold fox and I don’t normally go for petite girls. (And I do mean girls, she’s, like, 19. . .and no one finds it odd that a man who has watched her grow since infancy wants to do her on a swan bed? Maybe this is a camp classic after all.) (Note: in a rare SS Fun move, I have changed the grade on this film a few hours after first writing the review. The more I think about it, this is worthy of a full B+. And, yes, it WILL be a longtime camp classic.)
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Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.