So dark, the bore of The DaVinci Code

Rating: 2/10 (25 May 2006)

I had a hot dog when I went to the theatre. As for the movie, well...uh...the hot dog was good, did I mention that? Great...sausage. I think even the slightly stale bun was better than watching poor Tom Hanks try so darned hard and succeed in being outacted by a tree. OK, so it's not like I had any expectations whatsoever but damn, that was a horrible movie! If it had been 1 1/2 hours, it would have been more tolerable but then, alas, that wouldn't have allowed for the rather silly and asinine "Beautiful Mind"-type "visualizations". The point in which Tom Hanks was solving that Crypto-box thingy and he was visualizing the Newton solution was a complete and rather dull rip-off of those nice scenes in "A Beautiful Mind" where Russell Crowe had his ephiphanies and things. I will say that Paul Bettany and Audrey Tatou (sp?) were OK and Ian McKellen did a fine turn replaying his X-Men character with a less mutanty edge. Granted, I'm not a fan of the book but I will say that despite the rather horrendous writing of Mr. Brown, he kept you turning the pages. The movie made me yawn. And laugh. And wish it was WAY shorter. And poor, poor Tom Hanks. I hated Robert Langton in the books because he was such a pompous twit. No matter how hard Mr. Hanks tried, he didn't exactly become Mr. Langdon for me. He tried to become pompous but his Tom Hanks-iness sort of got in the way and I think he succeeded in being the equivalent of watching Chicken Little try to act like Popeye or something. The result was...wooden, to say the least.
However, I will say, my favourite moment was when the Albino Monk asked "Do you dare mock me?" (or something like that). Oh, how I love when characters talk to me because I can't help but respond! Also, there's this rather darling scene between Jean Reno's character and that other boring french policeman when Bezu or whatever the heck his weird French name is admits to being Opus Dei. If you replace the word "killing" with the word "writing", you have my whole philosophy on the works of Dan Brown! Hurrah for Hollywood!!