______________________________________________________________Movie Title: The Da Vinci Code
Starring: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, Alfred Molina.
Directed By: Ron Howard, also responsible for Oscar-worthy A Beautiful Mind and Apollo 13 (and the not-so Oscar-worthy Edtv).
Time & Date of Showing: 5:15 pm showing on Saturday, May 20th.
Attended With: The whole fam! Mom, Dad, sister, sister's fiance, brother, brother's fiance...and the number of people who completely read the book first: 1 (me).
Movie Synopsis in One Sentence: Cryptographer Robert Langdon becomes entangled in a mysterious conspiracy involving murder, Christianity, paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci, radical albino catholic monks, and the life of Jesus.
The Good: First of all, anything involving both Tom Hanks and Ron Howard gets automatic points in my book; I don't care if it's a movie about a racist clown that lives underwater with his parents and sells men's cologne (did I just spoil the surprise new show in Fox's Fall 2006 lineup?). Beyond that, the movie succeeds in portraying the complicated web of events that is the story of The Da Vinci Code in some coherent form. The last 20 or 30 minutes of the movie were interesting and succeeded in pulling me into the action of the story, so much so that I forget many of the details of how the story ends (particularly the last 2 minutes of the movie where Robert Langdon...well, you'll have to see for yourself). Ian McKellen was easily the best performance in the movie, glowing with genuine energy and wit as Sir Leigh Teabing (kind of like what Johnny Depp did in The Pirates of the Caribbean, but as a supporting role).
The Bad: Unfortunately, the movie was true to the book in a way that it should have taken some creative liberties: unnecessary wordiness. So many times it feels like Ron Howard just said "Yeah, here's the book, just memorize Chapter 6 and were gonna film you reciting it". Also...the main actor's performances weren't too exciting, but I think that may be a result of the characters and not the actors behind them... the visuals of the historical-ish flashback scenes felt like they belonged in one of those outdated movies you watched in world history class back in high school...I was afraid that Howard would tone down the albino monk self-abuse scenes, but instead they seemed to pop up often and last too long (I get it, he's still whipping himself!)...AND, making Robert Langdon's character battle it out with Sir Teabing in a "Christianity is a sham" versus "Well, not necessarily" was a tad much and felt less about the story and more about the controversy surrounding the book and film. [WHEW! I know it seems like a lot of bad stuff, but the expectations were high for this movie, so there's bound to be problems...the question is just how powerful were these problems on the overall strength of the movie...]
Book or Movie: I'd say read the book first before seeing the movie...this way, more people will buy the book and MAYBE it will actually have a shot at getting on the Bestsellers List...oh...never mind.
The Verdict: The movie version is basically the book acted out in front of a video camera. It tends to have rather dialogue-heavy scenes, so if you don't like reading you're probably not going to make it through the movie. Still, it's fun to see the characters, the settings, and the conspiracies of an intriguing book come to life.
If You Liked______, You May Like These Movies: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, A Beautiful Mind, National Treasure.
FINAL GRADE: B-
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