Not great, but an entertaining alternate spin on history

Rating: 7/10 (28 May 2006)

Being one of the "oppressed", as Christians are referred to in the book, I made sure to go into this movie fully informed of the real history vs. the made up and embellished Dan Brown history. I highly recommend anyone not familiar with the history to explore it and not let the movie and/or book be your sole source of information.
It was disappointing that the Catholic church is once again portrayed as oppressive zealots in a story. It is getting a tad boring seeing the same old bad guys. But overall, the story does have an adventure element about it that is intriguing, too bad it takes itself so serious that it forgets to have fun.
The film comes across as taking itself a tad too serious. This is an adventure, pure and simple. Yet the conspiracy element is played up way too much. Anyone familiar with the long rumored and talked about supposed relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene will find all of the "reveals" to be yawn inducing and those not informed are not given enough to really care about it. So much talk is given to the conspiracy that you get a bit bored with the proceedings.
I did like how the ending of the book was changed. I just wish they would have explored the sense of adventure inherent in the story rather than try and make it a serious docudrama. The similarly themed "National Treasure" succeeded far better by not taking the itself too serious and this film needed the same kind of restraint.