The Da Vinci Code
I waited until today to post this review because I didn’t want to ruin anything for people who were really wanting to see this movie. But if you didn’t see it on opening weekend, I figure you’re not all THAT into it…so maybe this review will save you the $10.
I will preface this review by saying that I have read the book. I liked the book and I thought it could make a decent movie. With that in mind, my wife, her aunt, her cousin and I went to see the 7:50 show on Friday. The movie had gotten some negative reviews from the early showings. I wasn’t going to let that affect how I went into the movie. Maybe they were just Dan Brown haters.
The movie starts out about how you would expect it to if you’ve read the book. But from there, the next 30-45 minutes goes into hyperdrive. The entire introduction to the story felt so rushed. There was no time given to develop anything at all. The lead character, Robert Langdon (played by Tom Hanks), is totally underdeveloped. You get virtually no backstory on him at all. In the books, his backstory is all that really endears you to him. That ends up leaving Hanks playing a very boring bookworm. Sophie (played by Audrey Tautou) shows up out of nowhere as a vanilla cop. They never explain that she’s actually a cryptographer in the law enforcement agency.
So, you get through the first 1/3 or so of the movie and then it gets slow. Painfully slow. By the end of the movie I was thinking to myself, “just let it be over.” It’s not that there wasn’t anything happening, there was. But it was just plodding on without interest or excitement.
I thought Teabing (played by Ian McKellen), the Holy Grail historian, was one of the few good characters in the movie. I was really excited when I heard McKellen had been cast to play him. I thought Bezu Fache (played by the awesome Jean Reno), the police captain, was awful. I don’t blame that on Reno, I thought he did well in the parts he was given. But in the book Fache plays a much more central role in his determination to catch Langdon.
My recommendation, do not pay money to see this movie. The book is okay (not great) but it’s at least an enjoyable read. The movie is just awful. Hopefully they’ll go back and make Angels and Demons, which I think is a better book, into a movie and they won’t sign Ron Howard to direct.
May 22nd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Agree, but wasn’t as struck with the first 1/3 of the movie. If I remember, it took a large part of the book just to get out of the Louvre so I thought that was actually a good idea to write that out in the interest of time. (Could have written out the bank scene . . . ??)
Also agree with Character development - whether the fault of Howard or the screenwriter, there was NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT and very limited context. Remind me why I should care about these characters, other than the fact that the actors were good in other movies . . . Perhaps this was due to the ground that needed to be covered in a short time but, Hanks, Tautou, and Reno are all exceptional actors that were sold short on a flimsy script. Silas and Teabing were (IMHO) the only decent portrayals. With McKellan, I kept seeing Magneto, but perhaps that’s my own bias . . .
Recommend everyone else pass on “A Brilliant Da Vinci Code Mind” as Howard has already done this one, only better. Next time, do less and do it better.
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:15 pm
That’s funny what you say about seeing McKellan as Magneto. I keep seeing him as Gandalf.