this will probably be an unnecessary spoiler cut

[fox]

If I'm not the last English speaker left who hasn't read The Da Vinci Code, lord knows I'm among them, so there's probably no need to cut for spoilers, but I'll do it anyway on principle.

Did anyone else think the movie was a sort of workmanlike B-plus?  (It gets the plus, I should add, from the production values rather than from the script or, bless them, the performances.)  I was actually very disappointed when Audrey turned out to be the Heir of Slytherin Magdalene -- the minute they started talking about how that was the whole point, I assumed she was it, and I was really sort of expecting a twist in the form of Oh, the Heir is actually Tom/Sir Ian/the cop/Alfred Molina/anyone but the obvious choice, i.e. the girl.  (Though I wouldn't have bought it if it had turned out to be Paul Bettany, I admit.)  So in the complete lack of twist, I felt like I hadn't actually been watching a mystery or anything suspenseful after all.

And it had more endings than Return of the King, I swear.

Comments

[juice817.livejournal.com]

The book was definitely better, as they usually are, and this was one that seemed much more bland onscreen than off. Several reviews I read said something to the effect that Howard seemed to be trying to tone things down so as not to be overly offensive and in so doing, took much of the thrill out of it.

From Entertainment Weekly:
As a novel, The Da Vinci Code hung speculative theology on a routine, if page-turningly rendered, cloak-and-dagger chase plot. It's no surprise that Howard plays up the thriller mechanics, which already felt like a movie on the page — the escapes and showdowns, the creepy stalker violence of Silas (Paul Bettany), a self-flagellating albino monk hitman who represents Opus Dei, the Catholic sect that's portrayed as intent on destroying the hidden revelations of its faith. The surprise, and disappointment, of The Da Vinci Code is how slipshod and hokey the religious detective story now seems. It's a challenge, to be sure, to cram Brown's litany of signs and symbols, his intricate meditations, into a two-and-a-half-hour film, but Howard, working from Akiva Goldsman's script, fails to build intellectual excitement into the quest. He uses cheesy digitized flashbacks, rarely trusting the dialogue to evoke history, and he seems faintly rushed and embarrassed each time the movie grows talky, as if he were worried that the breathless theology wouldn't hold us.

A crucial change from the book is that Langdon has been made into a skeptic, a fellow who doesn't necessarily buy that official Christianity is a lie. This is a sop to the film's critics (i.e., the Catholic Church), but it feels cautious, anti-dramatic. Yes, a soupçon of research reveals that the Priory of Sion is a hoax invented in 1956, and surely it can't be proved that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were ever intimate (though Martin Luther believed so). But what we want from a film of The Da Vinci Code is the fervor of belief. It's there only in Ian McKellen's playful, crusty turn as Leigh Teabing, the scholar who hobbles around on twin canes, spouting happy rhetoric about the meaning of the Grail. As a novel, The Da Vinci Code has a resonance that lingers. It may be less history than hokum, but it's a searching product of the feminist era, when even many true believers have grown weary of the church as an instrument of moral reprimand and male dominion. The film is faithful enough, but it's hard to imagine it making many converts.

The full review is here (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/review/movie/0,6115,1195010_1_0_,00.html), but that's all the review portion of it - the rest is mostly synopsis. I agree, and he says it better than I could. [g] I liked it, but yeah, it wasn't fantastic.

[wivern.livejournal.com]

I must be one of the other minority - I found the book really tedious, badly written and heavy handed, ( I just skimmed the last half to see if anything interesting and unexpected happened, but no) so I kinda expected the film to be good - on the principle that mediocre book make better movies than good books - but if they stuck closely to the book I expect the script is dire. I haven't seen it yet but the reviews, both professional and among my friends, are running about 9 against to every one for.

Part of my problem with the book was that I read History and Fine Arts at Uni and none of this was new to me so the Gee Wow factor was missing and I was just left with interminable cliff hanging chapters and pedestrian writing. Hmm... I really didn't like it did I? *g*

I'm still hoping I'll like the film better.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

Well, I will note that although I know a lot of people who liked the book for the story, I've heard some incredibly unflattering things said about the writing. Some of the best are over at languagelog -- Geoff Pullum gets going and a person could laugh for days. In fact I've saved the relevant languagelog posts here (http://del.icio.us/agent.reynard/danbrown). :-)