The Phantom of the Opera

(We open with the Channel Awesome logo, then cuts to a black and white auction going on, with Malcolm as the gavel holder, and a crowd of people, among them NC and Beth and Tim from Shark Jumping, watching the auction. Malcolm bangs the gavel)

Malcolm: Sold!

(The crowd applauds)

Beth: Well, I'm sure glad Tim and I stopped by for the studio auction of OneStepCamp.org. (A caption for that is shown) Plug.

NC: Well, I'm glad you shelled out all that exposition.

Beth: Yeah, but why are we all in black and white?

NC: Oh, the color was the first thing to go. Those two paid top dollar for it.

(Two cartoons carrying a colorful cube are shown leaving)

Cartoon #1: Come, Lurkey. We're going to put the color back in the Last Airbender movie.

Malcolm: #333, a DVD in pieces. (A destroyed DVD is shown) Some of you may recall the strange film of The Phantom of the Opera.

(NC and Beth gasp)

NC: Phantom of the Opera?

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

Beth: Yeah, brought to you by Joel Schumacher.

Tim: The Bat Credit Card guy?

(NC immediately shoots a shot at Tim to stop him talking)

NC: 20! It deserves a Nostalgia Critic review.

Beth: 30! Shark Jumping would do it better.

NC: 40! You don't even review movies.

Beth: 50! Your face looks weird when you smile. (NC looks at her weirdly) I just thought we were throwing out random insults.

NC: 60! It betrayed everything that was good about the musical!

Beth: 70! It betrayed everything that was good about the book!

NC: Somebody actually read the book?

Malcolm: 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.

NC and Beth: Oh, yeah.

Tim: Well, Webber already stole from Pucchini.

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

Malcolm: Well, then, perhaps we may frighten away the jokes of so many years ago with a little...recreation. Gentlemen! (Points to the right, but nobody's there) All right, it's just me.

(He bangs his fist on the destroyed DVD, causing an explosion as the pieces come together to form a disc. The title "The Phantom of the Opera: Musical Review" is shown as evil laughter is heard. Images and stills of various forms of Phantom of the Opera media, which includes stills from the movie, are shown. Like Mad Max: Fury Road and Hocus Pocus, the images and stills serve to replace movie clips in the review)

Beth (vo): 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 bio-graphic recap of falsified true events, you know, like in Old School: This is Spinal Trap.

Tim (vo): It follows the deformed Phantom, who lives in the sewers of the opera house. He's secretly giving voice lessons to a young ??? 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 (vo): 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.

NC (vo): 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 (Gerard Butler)."

NC: Which is what we're reviewing today.