The Da Vinci Code

Two entries in two days?! Is that even possible?! Yes, as shocking as I know that is, I'm actually publishing a new entry the very next day after my last entry!! How it happened even I can't imagine. So before we continue, let me give you a moment to get over your dismay . . . .

Okay, and now, on with the movie review! :-)

So last weekend I saw the highly anticipated movie version of the hugely successful best selling novel The Da Vinci Code. And I must say, it lives up to all the hype. I have to add, however, that I haven’t gotten around to reading the book yet (but having seen the movie, it’s pretty high on my list now), so I can’t really comment on how well it compares to the book or how good a job it does of bringing the story to the screen. All I can do is talk about how good a movie I thought it was in and of itself, with no comparisons to the original text.

Of course you can’t talk about this movie without talking about all the controversy surrounding it. Well, actually, you can. Which is why I deleted the paragraphs I’d originally written expressing my (mostly negative) views of the Catholic Church and their protests of this movie. I decided that just wasn’t a topic I wanted to even touch on (especially since I tend to get very fired up whenever I’m discussing religion or politics). Despite all of the fuss, this movie isn’t some thinly-veiled attempt to attack the foundations of Christianity – it’s nothing more than a wonderful, fun, exciting mystery/thriller/adventure, that ties pieces of history and mysteries/conspiracy theories from our past into a modern day treasure hunt. Anyone who wants to make it out to be more than that just needs to get over themselves.

The Da Vinci Code is actually very similar to National Treasure in its base concept, which is probably one of the reasons I liked it so much (because I love that type of story – the treasure hunt that’s tied to events from history). And like National Treasure, the conspiracy theories of The Da Vinci Code that make up the heart of the mystery are pretty fanciful and have little concrete basis in fact (although there are numerous theorists out there who would dispute that). Although both movies featured The Knights Templar as part of their mystery, I liked the mystery of this movie a little better than the one in National Treasure (mainly because even though I’ve never read Dan Brown’s novel, in the past I’d done some research and read some non-fiction texts closely related to the some of the texts that Dan Brown used when putting his story together, and I found the ideas they presented incredibly fascinating – but then again, anything involving The Knights Templar and secret societies and the many conspiracy theories that have come out of that time period are all great reads if you’re into that sort of thing). Whether you’ve read the book or not, if you do see the movie, make note of some of the names of people and groups and events that you see, then get online and look some of them up. It’s really fascinating some of the things you’ll come across and some of the ideas you'll see presented.

I must say, though, that the base mystery was about the only thing about The Da Vinci Code that was better than National Treasure (which isn't a criticism of The Da Vinci Code at all; it's more an indicator of just how incredibly fantastic a movie National Treasure was). The critics really trashed the The Da Vinci Code, which was a little bit of a surprise considering its director and main star, but I guess they’d just set the mark way too high for what they expected from the movie, and when it didn’t match that overly high standard, they attacked it as being a bad movie (or maybe they’re just stupid – one critic that I know of had the audacity to actually criticize the book as not being very good; I guess he knows better than the 50 or 60 million (or however many it is) fans that read and loved the book). That's critics for you, I guess. That being said, I do have to admit that despite really enjoying the movie, there are a few criticisms I can make.

My biggest criticism would be that some of the dialogue comes across as kind of wooden and almost forced. It just doesn’t seem to flow naturally from the actors. And I must admit that some of the actors aren’t giving their best performances ever in this movie (but when you’ve got such phenomenal actors as Tom Hanks and Ian McKellan, even if they're not giving their best personal performances, they're still doing a better job than a lot of other actors out there tend to do). But all in all the actors all do a pretty good job, and there are some just stellar actors in this movie (which might prejudice me a little bit, since these are actors that I really, really like), including Jean Reno, Jurgen Prochnow, and Paul Bettany in one of his best performances to date (this is an actor to look out for – every time I see him he just gets better and better. I’ve loved every performance of his that I’ve seen). And of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the very lovely Audrey Tautou, who does a very good job here as well (but I must admit, this is the first movie I've seen her in; there are a couple of her earlier films that are very much on my list of movies I need to see, I just haven't gotten around to seeing them yet).

There are a few spots in the movie that are a little far-fetched, but that’s to be expected in this sort of film. So all in all I have to say that the couple of criticisms I could make hardly detracted from my overall enjoyment of the film, and are certainly more minor complaints than could be made of a lot of other popular films from the last few years, so I think the critics just need to get off their high horses. I would highly recommend this movie to everyone. If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for???

And so we end this little interlude into the realm of current, actually at the theaters right movies. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming of old, long since left the theaters movies when my next entry comes out (but hey, on the bright side, I'm only 3 months behind now!!). And sadly, no, the next entry will not be tomorrow, or even this week. If I get really motivated and not too distracted with other things over the Memorial Day weekend, I may have the next entry done early next week (but I wouldn't hold your breath). With luck it won't take me too long, though, since I actually feel like I'm starting to get caught up with this damned thing. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.