How can a movie review be worthless? When the reviewer makes it clear that he hated the whole idea of the film going in, and the best that the movie could accomplish was to sustain his dislike.
Such is A. O. Scott's review of Phantom of the Opera in the New York Times. Scott's utter hatred of the Lloyd Webber canon makes him incompetent to review a film based on Webber's work; he will damn the film in any event.
....the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose relentless bombast afflicts this movie like a bad case of swollen lymph nodes.and lots more in that vein. If one hated Phantom on the stage, this review would confirm their prejudices. If one happened to like the play, though, parsing this rant is tiresome at best.
Of course, Lord Lloyd Webber's music is the whole point of the film, and Joel Schumacher, the director, does his best to find a visual style to match the vulgarity and pretentiousness of the soundtrack. He succeeds admirably....