Nostalgia Critic (TV Series)

The Phantom of the Opera (2016)

Beth Elderkin: Beth, Auction Customer #2

Photos 

Quotes 

• Auctioneer : [shows off a smashed DVD disc]  Number 333, a DVD in pieces. Some of you may recall the strange film of "The Phantom of the Opera".

  Nostalgia Critic : [he and Beth gasps]  "Phantom of the Opera"?

  Tim Sampson : Wasn't that supposed to be the grand adaptation of the epic Broadway musical?

  Beth Elderkin : Yeah, brought to you by Joel Schumacher.

  Tim Sampson : The Bat Credit Card guy?

  [the Critic fires a gun at Tim to shut him up] 

  Nostalgia Critic : Twenty! It deserves a Nostalgia Critic review.

  Beth Elderkin : Thirty! Shark Jumping would do it better.

  Nostalgia Critic : Forty! You don't even review movies.

  Beth Elderkin : Fifty! Your face looks weird when you smile.

  [the Critic looks at her weirdly] 

  Beth Elderkin : I just thought we were throwing out random insults.

  Nostalgia Critic : Sixty! It betrayed everything that was good about the musical!

  Beth Elderkin : Seventy! It betrayed everything that was good about the book!

  Nostalgia Critic : Somebody actually read the book?

  Auctioneer : Need I remind you that copyright around here has been tighter than this review series budget? Doing a copyrighted movie with copyrighted songs might not be the best idea.

  Nostalgia Critic , Beth Elderkin : Oh, yeah.

  Tim Sampson : Well, Webber already stole from Pucchini.

  Beth Elderkin : Maybe we can find a way to review it despite all that.

  Auctioneer : Well, then, perhaps we may frighten away the jokes of so many years ago with a little... recreation. Gentlemen!

  [points to his right, only to find no one there] 

  Auctioneer : All right, it's just me.

  [he bangs his fist on the smashed DVD, causing an explosion which puts the disc pieces together; the review of the movie begins amid evil laughter] 

• Beth Elderkin : "The Phantom of the Opera" was a novel in 1909 by French author, Gaston Leroux. While it's not the best novel in the world, it was still interesting and told in a unique way for the time period, kind of a biographic recap of falsified true events. You know, like in Old School: This is Spinal Trap.

  Tim Sampson : It follows the deformed Phantom, who lives in the sewers of the opera house. He's secretly giving voice lessons to a young ingénue named Christine Daae, and like any creepy teacher, the Phantom is also attracted to her. The moral of the story is about the beauty underneath the ugliness, a sentiment shared in many different French stories like "Beauty and the Beast" and "Hunchback of Notre Dame".

  Beth Elderkin : But it's not just about the music being beautiful, it's also about the power of compassion and empathy. He suffers because of his bad choices, while also being redeemed because of his good ones.

  Nostalgia Critic : The story was so timeless that they made film after film about it, and in 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber turned it into a smash Broadway musical, so big that people were waiting for a movie to come out about it. Webber and Schumacher first wrote the script all the way back in 1989, with original Broadway cast members, Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, set to star. But after a tough divorce between Webber and Brightman, the movie got delayed and delayed, until they just said, "Screw it. Let's just throw in the guy from '300'." Which is what we're reviewing today.

  [he hears a sound of glass breaking] 

  Nostalgia Critic : Or at least trying to.