Read the book, skip the movie

Rating: 3/10 (29 May 2006)

Although the movie as a stand-alone project wasn't horrible, when you've read the book and loved it like I did, the movie is a huge disappointment. The screen play is different from the book on many key points, leading to the whole meaning of the story being distorted beyond any significance, and the tacked on Jesus speech at Roslin church is a huge cop out. Another huge disappointment was the way in which Sophie's character in the movie had all of her moments of brilliance and intelligence removed so that all she was left with was this shell of a character shadowing Tom Hanks around. The distortion of her character and her characters background changed the story from one that empowered woman, and spoke of the sacred feminine, to one in which the the only lead female character was bland and wussy with no real talents. And the changes to Robert Langdon's character took away a lot of his skill and talent, leading one to question why on earth he would have been chosen to help Sophie anyway. In all, this movie takes a fantastic and empowering story and butchers it into a stereotypical Male-as-hero story with totally different religious messages and meanings.