This film is sloooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww.......

Rating: 3/10 (6 June 2006)

Before reviewing such a 'controversial' film, it may be worth making it clear where I am coming from.
First of all, I thought the book was entertaining, if badly written hokum. Second, as someone who was raised Catholic, I did not find any of the ideas in the book offensive, as I consider myself to be intelligent enough to realise that the central conceit of the film- that Jesus fathered a child- is a fiction, just as I now believe that much of the bible is apocryphal.
The problem I have with this film is that it is so slow. Every scene has the life stamped out of it by journeyman directing , painful (long) moments of exposition, and what I can only assume was penny-pinching by the producers. An example- the film contains the shortest and least exciting car chase ever, lasting approx 20 seconds and involving a car driving between two bin (garbage to Americans) wagons. I seem to recall the chase in the book was quite involved, allowing the Prof to have a Dan Brown trademarked 'really big think' whilst Sophie handled the driving.
Some bits are just plain hilarious- exhibit 1- Paul Bettany's mad monk turn was straight out of panto exhibit 2- The low flying plane- Sophie looks out of a plane window at the police cars, the way it is edited gives the impression that the plane is about 30 feet in the air. I'm no air traffic controller, but I would assume that planes do not fly that low until seconds before landing. exhibit 3- when they are investigating the body of the old bloke at the Louvre- why do they always shine a really bright light at the body's crotch? To be fair they do this on CSI as well, so it must be standard practice for Coroners to do this.
To be fair, I thought there were two good scenes- the scene with the Cryptex (where the prof visualizes the planets after visiting Newton's tomb- another 'really big think') and the scene at the end where he visits the Louvre- more thinking. This had nothing to do with the writing, directing, editing (etc), rather the music swelled up real good, and Tom Hanks did some of his best 'thinking acting'. He is one of the few Hollywood actors to be able to convey the impression of someone who is actually thinking (and remain credible) rather than just daydreaming.
Also it just occurred to me that Ian McKellen steals every scene that he's in, and the scenes showing stuff happening in historical times look awesome- like they are out of a much better movie. So I give it an extra star (from 2* to 3*).
In all, a big let down. I don't think I will ever watch this again, even if it shown on TV on a Sunday and there is nothing else on.