Good movie, better book

Rating: 8/10 (28 March 2007)

After having read the book and hearing friends talk about how much worse the movie was than the book, I have to be honest and say that I had low expectations when I rented the movie. The book went into so much depth about art, religion, and the conspiracy behind the holy grail that I was sure there was no way the movie could even come close to replicating that amount of detail, and explain the story the way it was originally written. Dan Brown did a great job with the book which right from the beginning set Ron Howard, the director of the film at a disadvantage as people have preconceptions as to how the movie should look. With a book every reader comes up with his or her own picture of the characters in their head, and when the movie comes out a majority are usually disappointed because the characters on screen do not match the ones created in his or her head. Taking all this into account I actually thought the movie was pretty good considering the difficulties they had to overcome. The acting in the movie was outstanding which is not uncharacteristic of Tom Hanks, but I was also impressed by the lead female role of the movie played by Audrey Tautou who did an excellent job of playing the curator's granddaughter. The supporting roles in the film were also great with actors perfectly cast for their parts. The plot of the movie was significantly different from the book in some parts which in most books turned movies has bothered me in the past (Sahara, The Bourne Supremacy, etc). However, with this movie I felt that it almost added some excitement because I wasn't entirely sure what the screen writers included or changed for the movie. One other positive aspect of the movie was the directing. I thought Ron Howard did an excellent job directing what had to be a very difficult film to direct. Turning a best selling book into a movie is hard enough in any case, but with a book that received so much acclaim and criticism at the same time, this film had to have been extra challenging. One of the few negative aspects of the film was the actual filming or editing in that the contrast of the movie was entirely too dark. I think a lot of the detail of the film was lost due to this problem. I thought it might just be my eyes but a few of the other reviews have had similar comments. I know I said that changing some of the aspects of the movie was good but in a few instances I thought it took away too much from the book. One example is the removal of the second cryptex in the movie. In the book a second cryptex was discovered which was completely removed in the movie version. Another thing missing in the movie is the part where Langdon and the granddaughter fall in love at the end. I know that almost every single movie ends with the guy getting the girl but in this case I thought it was an appropriate ending to the book. I tried not to compare the book to the movie too much because the movie will almost always lose but in this case I thought the film's ending fell a little short compared to the book's ending. Overall, I thought the movie was well directed, well acted, and well scripted with only a few disappointing aspects. I got my moneys worth and am definitely going to buy the DVD when it comes out. Although I don't think I will go for the extra bonus edition with a complimentary cryptex included!