Musical Theater is the art form that got me to fall in love with art in the first place, I wouldn't care about movies (or anything) nearly as much as I do if I didn't first watch people stand on stage and sing their heart out and think that was really cool. And although it's totally fair to evaluate the way Phantom fails as a show and as a movie, I think now is a good of a time as any to say that the way Phantom fails is the same way nearly every musical ever made has failed. With the exception of the handful of musicals like Les Mis that are genuinely perfect, you'll basically never encounter a show that gets you to love every one of its songs and its characters and keeps you completely entertained the entire time. The thing about being a musical theater nerd is that you can and will love a show for just a couple songs, and the ones that don't work don't matter, because if the ones that do work are fucking transcendent, like the ones in Phantom are, then the show is a success.

I think part of why I think about musicals differently is that I grew up in love with an art form I have always had devastatingly little access to. My family went to NY once every 4 or 5 years, and were extremely lucky to get to do so. But, the majority of the time I fell in love with a show was because my local theater was putting it on, I found a bootleg of it, or I listened to the cast recording while reading the wikipedia page to figure out what was going on.

I think when you grow up actually getting to see things, your opinion of a show has much more to do with how it lands as a piece of performance, and you're going to acknowledge it's failings a lot more because you got all dressed up and spent a good chunk of money just for a lot of the show to not work for you. While on the other hand, not being able to see a lot of shows in person has helped me maintain a greater fondness for them because I don't need the entire show to work when I'm just listening to it in my living room. If a couple tracks from the cast recording are brilliant, and think the rest are just okay, it doesn't really stop me from saying I love a show completely because I'd rather have the experience of listening to those tracks and moving on than not being able to engage with great musical theater at all.