"Blasphemous" Film of the Week: The Da Vinci Code
"Ahh! Jesus Birds!" - MeUnless you're the child of an uber-conservative Catholic, you've heard the talk of Hollywood's latest corrupting film, The Da Vinci Code. If you are an uber-conservative Catholic child here's the rundown: Remember all that stuff you've heard about Jesus dying on the cross and the zombie Jesus rising from the grave? Throw all that nonsense out because Jesus was shacked up with Mary Magdalene and there's a "royal bloodline." Well, nothing pisses off the Pope more than Jesus babies, so a secret organization, Priory of Sion, vowed to protect the bloodline to the end of time.
Flash forward to modern times where the insidious Cathlo-cult Opus Dei is killing Priory members one by one, trying to find this "Holy Grail" of information. In the process of eliminating Priory heretics, noted Symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is considered a suspect after the curator of the Louvre is murdered. In reality, the curator has left clues in the form of anagrams to the truth: That Priory member Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork contains the answer about the Holy Grail! What follows is a lot of conjecture and hearsay that drives Christians crazy.This film has taken a lot of heat from critics; however, they are being too harsh. The Da Vinci Code is by no means unwatchable and is pretty engaging if you apply some suspension of disbelief. In a good performance, Ian McKellen chews the scenery as Grail expert Sir Leigh Teabing, adding some lightness to a film that takes itself a little too serious. With that said, it does suffer from some problems. In lieu of a brisk pace packed with action, it appears they decided to cram in every detail and plot turn of the book. This bogs the movie down after 90 minutes of the 149 minute runtime. Also, because it's admittedly not your standard blockbuster fare, there's an extra effort on pointing out the obvious. Examples of this include painstaking explanations of terms like "anagrams" and visibly highlighting symbols on the screen as if we are all blind. Finally, through all the controversial dialogue, they repeatedly remind the audience that the ideas presented are theories.
The Good:
- Interesting story.
- Ass-kicking evil albino monk.
- Causing people with nothing better to do to go outside of theaters and protest. Probably the first sunlight they've seen in months.
- Cookie cutter performances from Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou
- A little too much talking and standing around instead of moving the plot along.
- Including a scene (Ancient Roman Christians voting on if Jesus was a man or not) that author Dan Brown admitted, after some additional research, was false.
- Overhearing the teenage girl behind me not knowing Ian McKellen.
- People playing it safe by criticizing the film based on the plot so not to offend people.