by Kenneth Andrews

Created on: April 13, 2008

Like most people who can't carry a tune in a padded backpack, I am always faintly awestruck by good singers. And never more so than in musicals. Opera singing is so clearly a skill beyond most mortals that, perversely, I view it as a glorious party trick, while we all think we know about the vocal manipulations required to get your average popster to the level of passable mediocrity. And then, in the middle, you have these people who can fill large theatres with their voices, often competing with whole ORCHESTRAS, and move audiences to tears with songs about amnesiac cats, Old Testament prophets and South American dictators. It's special.

Filming Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals makes pretty good sense commercially. Massive international fanbase, high public profile and no need to worry about the soundtrack album beyond maybe adding a new cover.

For all this, however, they're few and far between, particularly now it's hip to knock Alan Parker's Evita with Madonna's finest screen work and Antonio Banderas chewing up the scenery.

So what better man to resurrect ALW's movie franchise hopes than the man who crippled the Batman series? He's used to filming nutters who wear masks, capes and live in caves. Step foward Joel Schumacher and Phantom of the Opera.

Based loosely on a Gaston Leroux novel widely held to be one of the worst books ever written, Phantom of the Opera has always captivated and there have also been several non-musical adaptations. A beautiful singer, a disfigured but occasionally sympathetic madman, roses, masks, chandeliers and underground lakes, it's a distillation of all the cheesy fiction that's ever been written or will be written.

And yet, because deep down we all love watching blokes in big shirts having sword fights, it works. Despite a few plot worries and cinematographical wobbles, the film is effortlessly entertaining, telling in flashback the tale of Raoul and Christine's courtship, and of its complication by her masked music tutor.

It starts slowly, with an auction of the opera house's contents in black and white. The auctioneer is that bloke you see popping up loads on telly. He dulls it right down, until the chandelier is raised and we get an ear-splitting rendition of the main theme as the opera house is magically restored to its full glory AND full colour. It's a perfect sequence, marred only slightly by the following ten minutes of girls singing about angels and old boyfriends.

In a nutshell, you see, this is a film that relies heavily on

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