Who would have thought it would be so boring?

Rating: 3/10 (20 November 2007)

I confess, I haven't read the book.
But I like Ron Howard, Akiva Goldsmith (screenwriter), and the cast, so the movie seemed as though it should have been an amusing trip.
The most amusing part is Paul Bettany's albino(ish) monk hanging around on a cell phone, but the rest of the movie is pretty dreary. Tom's Robert Langdon is fairly bland for an academic (hint: that much education makes anyone twitchy). Tatou's cop status seemed more like a prop than a career, and I would have loved to hear the conversations between Ian McKellen and Ron Howard over Sir Leigh's "personal motivations." Most of the actual plot unfolds through dialogue, and Akiva seems to be giving the finger to his screenwriter profs who said flashbacks were a bad idea. They are in this movie too.
Quite a lot of the movie unfolds too much like National Treasure: clues found in historical artifacts that must be explained with a History Channel sound bite. For all its goofiness, National Treasure is more historical accurate than Da Vinci and saves us the self-flagellating monk.
(note: I really am a fan of Paul Bettany, the amazing actor who came out of A Knight's Tale with you thinking he was still an amazing actor. The role of Silas, I hope, sounded amusing to him on paper but the character is so thin, it's the kind of role that someone hands over to Kevin Bacon for the sake of a quicker link to Audrey Tatou. Also, Silas appears to be in fairly good physical condition for a self-mutilator. The punishing gym scenes must have been cut.)