For those unfamiliar with the play or the Gaston Leroux novel it was based on, the plot goes like this: The cellars of the fin-du-siecle Paris Opera are haunted by a mysterious man known as the Phantom, who wears a mask to hide a facial disfigurement he was born with. A brilliant composer, the Phantom acts as the unofficial impresario of the Opera, dictating its aesthetic affairs from his subterranean den. When Christine Daae, a ballet girl with an unusually beautiful voice, joins the Opera, the Phantom begins tutoring her in singing, and soon gains a Svengali-like control over her. Complications ensue, though, when a handsome aristocrat named Raoul begins to court Christine, and when the Opera’s new managers refuse to cater to the Phantom’s wishes and let Christine sing in a leading role. The Phantom, who has few qualms about committing acts of violence, vows that neither his romantic or artistic desires will be thwarted, and embarks upon a campaign of threats, blackmail, terror, and murder.

Now, there’s all the makings of a wonderfully dark Gothic melodrama in this material: one can imagine a skilled director using it as a platform for some sensitive reflections about how bodily disfigurement can shape the soul, say, or the relationship between artistic and sexual passion. Neither Webber’s musical nor Schumacher’s film, however, comes close to touching on anything like a weighty theme. Schumacher chooses to play up the bombastic and sensational aspects of Webber’s musical, and with reason: there are legions of fans out there waiting with breathless anticipation for the falling chandelier, the twilight cemetery, and the candles rising up out of the Parisian sewers. What works on the stage, though, comes across on the silver screen as pure, unmitigated camp. Heaving bosoms! Showers of rose petals! Hunky, half-dressed men with anachronistically long hair! Now, I know that different women have different levels of tolerance for this sort of thing, but by the time the Phantom lifted a lingerie-clad Christine out of a swan-shaped boat and carried her to a big, puffy white bed surrounded by thousands of candles (one wonders how he keeps them all lit down in those damp cellars), I was rolling my eyes so high I could have counted the flyspecks on the theatre’s ceiling.

That’s not to say the movie isn’t totally unenjoyable. The leads are attractive: Emmy Rossum (Christine) is seraphically pretty and has a lovely voice; Patrick Wilson (Raoul) looks as though he stepped out of the pages of GQ; and Gerard Butler, who plays the Phantom . . . well, he’s just hot. There’s no reason this guy has to hang around in the cellars--all he has to is keep his mask on and his shirt off and he’ll be all set!

The set design and costuming provide ample eye candy as well: the film is colorful, swift-paced, and easy-to-imbibe, like a cinematic version of Skittles. A few scenes even approach the striking. In one, we witness a horrific flashback to the Phantom’s childhood, in which he was displayed as a caged “freak” at a fair. In another, an aged Christine and Raoul meet fifty years later in the now-dilapidated Opera as its contents are being auctioned off; as we watch, Christine slips into a reverie and suddenly the opera house bursts into vibrant, humming life all around us. It’s as though the entire plot of the story takes place in Christine’s mind (a device I wish Schumaker and Webber had done more with).

Strangely enough, the film isn’t as accomplished musically as it is visually. Webber’s tunes range from the laughable (“The Point of No Return”) to the passably pretty (“All I Ask of You”), and never rise far above the level of the average pop song.

In short, fans of the musical probably won’t be disappointed, but if bodice-rippers aren’t your thing, I’d say pass on the Phantom.