The Da Vinci Code 2006
While this movie certainly has had tons of attention including a Newsweek cover several months before the release of the movie, early reviews were negative and maybe I went in with low expectations. At any rate, I was pleasantly surprised that the movie was enjoyable and easy to follow for someone who had never read the book. The plot isn’t very complex and you basically just go from one point to the next. There are a few major mysteries for you to figure out, but pretty much everything resolves itself quickly and Ron Howard literally spells things out for the most obtuse viewers just so you don’t miss anything.
The acting was adequate, at least by Hanks, Tautou, and McKellan. Alfred Molina, Jean Reno, and Paul Bettany are pretty much wasted. My girlfriend explained some of the differences between the book and the movie afterward and it sounds like they weren’t afraid of making some pretty big changes in order to improve the movie. There was a fair amount of exposition, but not as much as I feared.
The movie producers can certainly thank the Catholic Church for helping them sell tickets. That kind of publicity simply can’t be bought. I found slights against the church to be negligible. They point out that the pope has nothing to do with what is going on, and the rest of the stuff about whether Jesus had descendents simply wasn’t offensive since it is clearly fiction. It’s like the muslims complaining about cartoons of Mohammed. The only people who really should have been offended are members of Opus Dei. It seems kind of cruel that Dan Brown would pick on an actual sect of catholicism to have as bad guys.
I thought this was an enjoyable, if kind of lightweight movie. I’ll give it a B.
Owned on: Digital