I've Got to Get to a Library... Fast!

When the reviews for The Da Vinci Code started coming in all the negativity towards the movie centered on the new haircut that Tom Hanks was sporting. You got to love journalist that a movie that threatens the foundation of one of the big three religions and they cared more about Hanks new flowing locks. Granted that movie was based on the Dan Brown novel that I didn’t read on account that, well, I don’t read. Although even if you didn’t read the book it was hard to avoid the controversy of the book that suggested that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene which produced a kid and that a sect of the Catholic church has been trying to cover the bloodline up ever since by any means necessary.

That is where the movie starts off with a messenger of the church is going around killing the keepers of the truth. And dude’s creepy with the albino hair (although he’s not as pale as he should be if an albino) and inflicts torture on himself so he will suffer much like Jesus did. But for some reason he does the self-torture in the buff that leads to too much albino nudity than I ever need to see. His latest murder brings Hanks, a well known symbolist, to the crime scene to help decipher something (as well as being the patsy for the crime) as well as the victim’s granddaughter played by French actress Audrey Tautou.

And that is where the movie slows down to the pace of a sloth. Tautou is a bore and hadn’t yet mastered the English language. That is not that she doesn’t talk occasionally in her native tongue along with other characters which leads to way too many subtitles. Seriously, the reason why I watched the movie instead of reading the book was so I wouldn’t have to actually read. But anyways.

Aside from a decent car chase in the first act, the film gets much better with the introduction of Ian McKellen as an old colleague of Hanks and Holy Grail expert. It’s almost a different movie with him and the twists and turns begin, although the biggest twist is pretty apparent early in the movie which makes me wonder if the novel was that easy to figure out the ending. But nonetheless, had they started the movie with the introduction of McKellen, the movie as a whole would have been much more enjoyable and less frustrating.

The Da Vinci Code gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.