As popular entertainment, The Da Vinci Code is certainly effective. There's no more need to take it down for being lowbrow and poorly written, because it is now simply a cultural entity to observe. Criticizing it is like criticizing the Great Wall of China (though as an aside, I could totally build a more impressive wall than that overrated you-can-see-it-from-space piece of shit). However, understanding the phenomenon of The Da Vinci Code is crucial in understanding why the long-awaited film version is actually even more of a piece of shit. The problems with this movie are numerous, and those to blame are not limited to the filmmakers. The audience might actually be foremost to blame, for it was their need for this movie to be perfect that caused it to be a tedious, humorless, riskless endeavor that feels much more like fan fiction than filmmaking. Worse, though, is that no one involved seems to be getting any joy out of it whatsoever. Tom Hanks is badly miscast as the sexy intellectual (two attributes he is incapable of conveying) Robert Langdon, who gets embroiled in a convoluted murder mystery centered on nothing less than the Holy Grail. I don't blame Hanks, or even the casting director: for it had to be Hanks. He is the Da Vinci Code of American actors. The rest of the cast is well chosen, at least on paper. Jean Reno is a solid choice to play the "bulldog" French cop on Langdon's trail; Alfred Molina is ideally cast as the corrupt Bishop Aringarosa; Paul Bettany is great as the albino self-flaggelator Silas (though I wish, just for laughs, that they'd cast the kid from Powder, hat and all); Ian McKellan is typically charming as charismatic cripple Sir Leigh Teabing. Surprisingly, Audrey Tautou turns out to be a worse choice for Sophie Neveu than Hanks is for Langdon … we all fell in love with her as Amélie, but her English not so good. Yet, again: it had to be Audrey Tautou, for she is Middle America's idea of who Sophie Neveu must be. And who should have directed The Da Vinci Code? I'm sure we all could come up with some interesting suggestions, but could it really have been anyone other than Ron Howard? For he is the Da Vinci Code of American directors: likable and appealing, but a real hack through and through. And he directs The Da Vinci Code with the expected fists o' ham, but with a twist: this time, he's deadly serious. And this is what really sinks the movie. Howard, and probably the studio, wanted this movie to be the blockbuster equivalent of the book. Perhaps they know that the book is just popcorn entertainment; perhaps they, like the masses, have come to see it as something more. But in trying to deliver a reverent adaptation of what was always basically an unfilmable screenplay, they've created one of the most deadening cinematic experiences I've ever endured. Howard and his cast treat The Da Vinci Code like it is the fucking Bible, and like most literal interpretations of the Bible, it buckles under the weight of its own self-importance. Now, to be nice for a moment, I can't say I completely detested the movie at all. It was fun to see some of the visualizations of scenes from the book, seeing what Hollywood would do with that ubiquitous book. Some of the performances were enjoyable, and others were so howlingly bad that there was a level of camp enjoyment to be found. But in the end, watching TDVC was like watching an all-star-cast read a bunch of riddles to one another. Wait, let me rephrase that: watching TDVC was watching an all-star-cast read a bunch of riddles to one another. Amazingly, most of the same people who loved the book loved the movie … I guess I overestimated the critical faculties of the masses. Hence, the studio will release elaborate "collector's edition" DVD sets and shit like that, continuing to ignore that neither the book nor the movie was really any good. And 50 years from now TDVC will be spoken of alongside Gone With the Wind as one of the best movies in history. Hopefully my grandchildren and/or their nanopets will be around to register their dissent.
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