so, I watched the Phantom Of The Opera last night... got caught up in the music... and the romance... and the heartbreak... *swoons* but wasn't too swept away to burst out laughing at certain parts. it started when Christine goes to light a candle for her father in the Chapel and hears the Phantom's voice... OH MY GOD THERE'S A VOICE COMING FROM INSIDE THE WALLS!! was she just too young when this started to think anything of it? she was singing airily about the voice being inside her mind as if that sort of thing happens to all girls. were the words "creepy" and "stalker" not in peoples' vocabulary back then? or did she just have her head too far into the clouds?

next, it was the hilarity of the Phantom's damp, underground lair. every time some tobacco-chewing slob misses the spittoon or some drunk is off-target in the little boys' room up top, they know about it downstairs because it comes slithering through the moldy cracks in the floors. and this is the bachelor pad the Phantom brings the girl over to? "Come, let's boat through waist-deep sewage and consumate our one-sided relationship." a single guy's idea of a romantic evening. at least he didn't have a football game blaring in the background.

then it was the narrow-minded, bone-headed condecension of the other guy, whatever his name was, the blond who keeps trying to tell Christine she's just dreamt up the Phantom despite her telling him in plain English, or French or whatever they were supposed to have actually been speaking in that story, that she's been there, to the Phantom's lair and seen it and him. this is the numbskull who actually has to go and get his sword (apparently he left it strapped to his other pants) when the Phantom actually appears during "Masquerade". "Holy crap, you mean that guy's real?!" doesn't he have servants to scurry off and fetch his sword for him? after the swordfight in the cemetary, when he was bleeding dramatically through his puffy shirt, Christine should have told him he was only dreaming it.

finally, it was the Phantom's nasty temper. he had a difficult childhood. perhaps "I" statements would have helped. "I feel like killing people when you use the voice I helped cultivate to sing a sexy rooftop duet in the dreamily falling snow with another man."

LOL!! that movie's entertaining for so many reasons other than the ones they intended. it's not a bad movie. by all means, see it, but don't take it too seriously.