The Phantom

The movie is wonderfully entertaining, red-blooded and rousing, and with a production design that makes it uncommonly handsome. Read full review

If you're able to suspend disbelief, the film's strengths outweigh the many weaknesses. The action sequences are a lot of the fun. The adventure is exciting. And the story perfectly replicates the style and tone of a classic adventure or Saturday matinee serial. Read full review

Everything about The Phantom is pleasantly old-fashioned, the opposite of avant-garde and cutting edge. Not intended for those who yearn for greatness, this unassuming adventure film is so cheerful and sweet-natured it's difficult to resist warming up to its modest charms. [7 June 1996, p.CF]

Perhaps because I expected nothing - the movie struck me as one of the better comic-strip translations, and one of the better films of the genre. It's fast, colorful, entertaining and a clear cut above its most immediate predecessor, 1994's "The Shadow." [7 June 1996]

The Nintendo generation may not “get” The Phantom any more than those original Thirties fans would have understood Bruce Wayne's tortured psyche, but that aside, Wincer's updating of an old warhorse is lovingly done. It's a Saturday afternoon matinee for the Nineties, 60 years old and totally new. Read full review

Although The Phantom is more often enjoyable than not, it lacks that special characteristic necessary to provide it with a unique identity. Arriving in the midst of so many "can't miss" offerings, I expect it to sink like a rock, moving quickly to "dollar theaters" then to video. I'd like to be able to champion this film, but the truth is that I'm tiring of the genre as a whole, and, while The Phantom opts for a different tone than most of its brethren, it's still not an especially memorable motion picture. This is the kind of movie that offers modest entertainment while you're in the theater, but is forgotten by the time you get home. Read full review

The Phantom has more potential as an audience-participation show than as a straight movie, so try to see it in a packed theater with a crowd that can have fun with it. Or wait for the videotape so you can build your own "Mystery Science Theater" party around it. [7 June 1996]

Despite the pleasant feel and fun performance from Zane there's something missing from this superhero adventure. Read full review

Whether the film excites you or not, it does excel with some glossy art direction that looks suitably slick in a quality picture transfer. Clear and sharp, this is a pleasure to watch. Read full review

Yet the raiders-of-the-lost-bones plot and period detail remind us that post-Indiana Jones, a cliff-hanger needs action more blockbuster than lackluster, plus dialogue better balanced between winking kitsch and comfort-food corn. Read full review

Little expense has been spared in putting this adventure fantasy on screen, with vintage planes and automobiles by the yard, striking Art Deco production design and breathtaking Thai coastal locations. A pity that the performers are so uncharismatic, with leading man Billy Zane plastic and soulless in Lycra, and not much more winning when he switches to playboy mode to woo free-spirited politico's daughter Kristy Swanson (pertly anonymous). Read full review

The pleasures are familiar, but not the least bit inspired. Read full review

Without peril, The Phantom can only get by on dazzle, and there's not quite enough of that to hold interest -- unless you're 8 years old and seeing dazzle for the first time. Read full review

Essentially, this is RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK without the narrative savvy and self-referential cleverness. Read full review

A second-rate film about a third-rate superhero played by a C-list actor.

Sorry, folks, but he just looks too much like one of the Fruit-of-the-Loom guys. [7 June 1996, p.7G]

While reviving the "The Phantom" may have seemed like a good idea at the time, it's one comic book superhero that just doesn't translate that well to the screen. [7 June 1996, p.46]

Wincer shoots the whole thing - which is dressed up with cherry-red vintage fighter planes and boxy Pan Am Clippers and offers a few sequences in Thai lagoons of gloriously shocking turquoise - in a manner that renders even surefire stuff (collapsing rope bridges, horseback rides through crowded Manhattan streets) ho-hum. Kids of a certain age may be distracted by the bright colors and broad acting - the film is, at least, devoid of any gratuitously nasty violence - but most audience members who find their way into the theater will wonder when the Ghost Who Walks is going to walk off into the sunset. It ain't soon enough. [7 June 1996, p.03]

Based on the comic strip created in 1936 by Lee Falk, The Phantom is a handsomely produced, numbingly impersonal adventure film that fails to do anything new with the format. [7 June 1996, p.49]

The Phantom is a spiritless affair likely to vanish quickly from first-run screens. Read full review

Zane, a good actor in the right circumstances (Orlando, Dead Calm), is trapped by screenwriter Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and Australian director Simon Wincer (Free Willy), who don’t give him anything to act. Read full review

Sorry, Phantom, but the purple suit has got to go. No amount of buff bod can make an audience take a superhero in bright purple seriously...And while we're at it, that script has got to go, too. Screenwriter Jeffrey Boam apparently studied the first two "Indiana Jones" movies so thoroughly -- so that he could write "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" -- that he's carried many of the motifs to "The Phantom." The result is not breathtaking excitement, but rather a stunning lack of originality. [7 June 1996]