« Protest on the West Coast | Main | Bad Santa »

Panning a movie review without actually having seen the movie is tricky ground, but I have some skepticism about Philip Kennicott's WaPo take on the newly released screen adaptation of Phantom of the Opera, specifically this line:

It apologizes for the fact that when Rossum's character, the ingenue soprano Christine, gets her first big break, she doesn't actually produce very good music. But there's the ever-loving camera, emphasizing not her singing but the response of others to the music, so we love her through them, and forgive a voice that would be laughed out of a real opera house.

(Emphasis mine)

Two things fuel my doubt:

1. Her voice sounded very good in the brief clip that I saw on an HBO special the other day. The song was delivered hesitantly because that reflected the nature of the specific scene, but seemed pretty competent nevertheless. (To judge for yourself, "Enter Flash site," "Skip" intro, click on "The Music," open "Media Player" and listen to track 2, "Think of Me.")

2. And then there's this:

Born and raised in New York, NY, Emmy Rossum is already an entertainment veteran, having performed with the likes of Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti in the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center, and has sung in a Carnegie Hall presentation of "The Damnation of Faust," conducted by James Levine. During her tenure at the Metropolitan Opera, Rossum performed in over twenty different operas in six different languages, and had the pleasure of working under the direction of Franco Zefferelli in "Carmen" and Tim Albery in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream."

"[A] voice that would be laughed out of a real opera house[?]" Even underplayed, on a bad day, obviously not.

Otherwise, Kennicott's hopelessly snobby judgment that "a bad novel that became a bad musical lives on as a gleefully bad movie," misses the point of Andrew Lloyd Weber's interpretation of the original story - it's intended as a visually exciting rock and roll reinvention of the operatic genre. In short, it's just entertainment. While his criticisms of the hyperbolic action and plot holes may hit the mark (as these are aspects of the musical), I suspect that anyone that enjoyed the stage version without being horrified that Andrew Lloyd Weber was "stealing" from "Puccini," might appreciate the film as well.

But that's just my instinctual guess.

UPDATE: Ain't the internet grand? A reader e-mails the following story:

Emmy Rossum was a break-out star/singer in "Songcatcher." At age 16. She sang traditional ballads in that film, mostly a cappella.

The film debuted about 5 years ago at Sundance to an audience of a couple hundred. Being involved in the film, I was lucky enough to be there. After the screening, the filmmakers were up front doing Q&A. Someone in the audience asked if the singing was "real" in the film. The director turned to Emmy - she was maybe 18 then (actually she was way younger - Ed) - and asked if she'd like to answer. From a cold sit, in Utah mountain air, she broke into an (a cappella) of one of the songs. Superb, under any condition. I have rarely witnessed a Hollywood crowd stunned into silence, but she did it.

Anyone who criticizes Emmy Rossum's chops, her voice that is, just doesn't know what they are talking about.

In addition, she's fairly hot, though young.

UPDATE: ninme has some related thoughts. And Robbo the Llama agrees, in his own snobby way. Shocker.

Posted by Bill at December 22, 2004 09:58 AM | TrackBack (7)

Comments

Posted by: Random Numbers at December 22, 2004 09:03 PM

Posted by: Cybrludite at December 25, 2004 01:00 AM