Forget the movie, read the book.

Rating: 2/10 (20 May 2006)

** contains spoilers **
I was severely disappointed in Ron Howard's ho-hum interpretation of the excellent novel. I was hoping that the initial reviews had been wrong, and I would at least enjoy seeing all the puzzles visually presented, but I was let down. Then again, I can't really say I was expecting much, as I had assumed that it would be terrifyingly difficult to creatively transpose the lengthy passages of historical background and character development neatly into cinematic form. Oh, they did try for 2.5 hours but somehow even with the long run time, I never sympathized with the characters as I did with the novel. Furthermore, the length made a mess of the pacing, which occasionally lurched forward whenever Silas appeared (people in the audience even screamed) and then slogged for so long it was easy to forget the protagonists were running for their lives. I always had the sense in the book that danger was just around the corner, but the film version completely misses this suspense.
Tom Hanks, bless his heart, plays a truly realistic university professor... but the "I'm a nerdy guy just caught up in things I don't understand" shtick is completely wrong and overplayed for this context. Audrey makes a lovely Sophie, but much of her charm seems to have been dialogue- and accent- coached away. The character development is further short-circuited by Howard's decision to use odd semi-flashback scenes which reduce the rich stories of these characters to a few CG'd up flashes. One hideous example of poor directing choices comes when Remy is talking with the Teacher and we're not supposed to know the identity of the Teacher- this is easy to handle in literature, and admittedly difficult to render in cinema, but the sheer awkwardness of the camera movements and the gross transparency of the intentionally one-sided duologue is a missed opportunity for innovation.
Speaking of missed opportunities, let's talk about the art design... could the set of the final revelation have been any worse? A secret latch under a rug in the shape of a painfully obvious symbol? Come on! This completely misses the clever ingenuity of Dan Brown's puzzles. Although exhaustive time is spent on exposition, little is spent on the actual puzzle solving, making each revelation seem inevitable and contrived instead of suspenseful and intellectually exciting. If the medium had been leveraged more effectively, Howard could have given us a much better visual representation of the symbols in the text, but again, the opportunity is wasted, especially in the scene in which Teabing (sic) explains the meaning of the grail. Where was all the CG wizardry here? Even the painting represented on the big LCD screen is so grainy and washed out it loses the purpose of writing a story that utilizes the weight and genius of DaVinci's art.
With such dramatic locations, I don't see how this was screwed up so badly. Perhaps it was because I was stuck sitting waaay up front, but I noticed a *lot* of out of focus shots, and it wasn't just the projector, because the next shot would be fine. Someone needs to wake up the focus puller and get them to do their job!
**bad spoiler!!!**
The worst part about the film adaptation is the dumbing down of the material to make it less controversial. In the book, Sophie has a falling out with her grandfather because she sees him in a sexual ritual. In the movie, this is ever-so-briefly hinted at. This is a major omission because a) it motivates most of Sophie's actions and is a source of tension until the trust is formed between her and Langdon b) it contains one of the book's most accurate and damning jabs at misogynistic church doctrine. This was done almost certainly to ensure the film would get a PG-13 and not an R rating... opting for studio bottom line over artistic expression. Finally, I hardly see the justification of all the protests etc... when the film ends on such a dogmatic, pro-Christian note. Hanks' last lines were so horribly forced and so Hollywood "you thought this was going to be controversial? Just kidding! We were on the side of hegemony all along!"