REVIEWING: "LOVE NEVER DIES"

LOVE NEVER DIES

(This show was presented in movie theaters as a special event: this review is of that event, not the stage production itself, which might come off a little better.)

Some stories should be permitted the graceful exit, never to be dragged down by an inept sequel.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was a profoundly moving story when it was first published in the 1800s.  It became a lush and fantastic production, as Andrew Lloyd Webber made it into a showcase for Sarah Brightman's voice, and the movie of the musical was spectacular.

LOVE NEVER DIES also has some wonderful, extravagant costuming and set-design.  Instead of the Victorian gothic of the original, the makers of this one went to the grotesquerie of 1905 Coney Island.  The supporting cast is equally wonderfully, artfully grotesque, the sideshow elevated to wonder, never sleazy or gross. 

Possibly, A. Lloyd Webber's music is also fine, but I confess, the lyrics were distractingly awful, in my opinion, third rate poetry filled with psychotherapy jargon that failed to actually move my heart, or reveal the psychotic depths of the Phantom, though perhaps they were apt enough in revealing the banal psyches of the other lead characters.

The story is contrived and predictable from the entrance of each character, and seemed to me to be terribly terribly pretentious, as if  enough glamour and self-confidence could pass it off as a thing of real art and true depth. 

I fear money-making, more than art or truth, was behind this effort, and even the much finer elements of costuming, set, and the wonderful supporting cast, don't make it worth even the $18 ticket price for this movie-theater Special Event. The most wonderful packaging can't lift up mediocre content. It by no means lives up to the original PHANTOM...  but leaves only the taste of something trying to make more money off that original amazing and successful spectacle.

So... a lot of people have raved about this production, originally produced on stage in Melbourne, Australia.  I am making a guess that it comes across better on a stage, at some distance, than as close up and intimate as this film makes it.  Makeup for theater requires distance to be effective.  It is a different art from makeup for movies.  And the mics, attached to the singers' hairlines, invisible on stage, are distractingly obvious on film that puts you right on the stage with them.

Seems to me, a lot of miscalculations were made to bring this stage production to the screen. One of the worst is the tedious, self-congratulatory lead-in lecture by Lloyd Webber himself. It is rarely a good idea to wear down your listener with going on and on about how wonderful a child you've made, and a worse one to raise the level of expectations so high that it practically sets the audience up for disappointment.

No, I'm sorry, I don't recommend this.