Da Vinci Code review!
The Da Vinci Code
This review contains spoilers, if a spoiler can be said to be an unwanted revelation of an exciting conclusion-or, in the case of "The Da Vinci Code," the fact that it has none.
The Jewel of the Nile, in the 1980s movie bomb of that name, turned out to be a person. So does the Holy Grail, in the joyless new film of Dan Brown's airport lobby staple "The Da Vinci Code." It's a miscalculation. The poster of the film promises that its heroes will blow the lid off "the greatest coverup in human history," rocking the foundations of Christian belief. It doesn't work.
"No one but the pure of heart can find the golden grail," Queen sang. No such joy here. Here, we're supposed to believe that if catatonic hero Tom Hanks (playing "professor of symbology" Robert Langdon) were to go public with the "truth" of Jesus's marrying and starting a family-let's say, throwing a press conference where he laid out all the word puzzles and the revelation that Leonardo Da Vinci embedded clues in his paintings that anticipated the Beatles' "Paul is Dead" hoax-millions would listen and stop believing in Jesus as we know him. They would be confronted with a Rube Goldberg device of a paternity case against him, revealing through a lot of Knights Templar hokum that a modern-day granddaughter of Jesus walks the earth.
The trouble is, people are making these claims all the time on public access TV and no one cares. There's a reason why Holy Grails are exciting-as seen in uncredited "Da Vinci Code" source material "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," whose library scene is liberally ripped off here-whereas people claiming to be Christ are a dime a dozen. Plus the "coverup" was already asserted in the crank 1983 tract "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" (whose authors have unsuccessfully sued "Da Vinci" for plagiarism).
You'd think most people would rather see Julian Glover skeletonize in an adventure movie where the Grail is supernatural, than watch Tom Hanks stumble around joylessly in a movie where it's not. What if the Catholic Church were much less interesting than you ever suspected? Wow, gripping.
Not much else to see here, really, in this sorry screen adaptation of the Spirituality section of Borders, featuring some of the most incoherently-directed action scenes since the 1995 Stallone film "Assassins." Reviewers are saying Sir Ian McKellan and Paul Bettany deliver delicious performances, but it can only be out of desperate hunger for recognizable human behavior.
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and now.. what say people? lemme know your views...
;-)
This review contains spoilers, if a spoiler can be said to be an unwanted revelation of an exciting conclusion-or, in the case of "The Da Vinci Code," the fact that it has none.
The Jewel of the Nile, in the 1980s movie bomb of that name, turned out to be a person. So does the Holy Grail, in the joyless new film of Dan Brown's airport lobby staple "The Da Vinci Code." It's a miscalculation. The poster of the film promises that its heroes will blow the lid off "the greatest coverup in human history," rocking the foundations of Christian belief. It doesn't work.
"No one but the pure of heart can find the golden grail," Queen sang. No such joy here. Here, we're supposed to believe that if catatonic hero Tom Hanks (playing "professor of symbology" Robert Langdon) were to go public with the "truth" of Jesus's marrying and starting a family-let's say, throwing a press conference where he laid out all the word puzzles and the revelation that Leonardo Da Vinci embedded clues in his paintings that anticipated the Beatles' "Paul is Dead" hoax-millions would listen and stop believing in Jesus as we know him. They would be confronted with a Rube Goldberg device of a paternity case against him, revealing through a lot of Knights Templar hokum that a modern-day granddaughter of Jesus walks the earth.
The trouble is, people are making these claims all the time on public access TV and no one cares. There's a reason why Holy Grails are exciting-as seen in uncredited "Da Vinci Code" source material "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," whose library scene is liberally ripped off here-whereas people claiming to be Christ are a dime a dozen. Plus the "coverup" was already asserted in the crank 1983 tract "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" (whose authors have unsuccessfully sued "Da Vinci" for plagiarism).
You'd think most people would rather see Julian Glover skeletonize in an adventure movie where the Grail is supernatural, than watch Tom Hanks stumble around joylessly in a movie where it's not. What if the Catholic Church were much less interesting than you ever suspected? Wow, gripping.
Not much else to see here, really, in this sorry screen adaptation of the Spirituality section of Borders, featuring some of the most incoherently-directed action scenes since the 1995 Stallone film "Assassins." Reviewers are saying Sir Ian McKellan and Paul Bettany deliver delicious performances, but it can only be out of desperate hunger for recognizable human behavior.
---
and now.. what say people? lemme know your views...
;-)