Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code

Originally posted on May 22, 2006

I watched the movie, 'The Da Vinci Code' today at the local theatre. I found it to be pretty slow; it ran at around 149 minutes. Probably including the credits, it felt like it was more than three hours long. The movie was just plainly awful when compared to the book. 'Angels & Demons' was better and would have been a better movie if it were put into the right hands. 'The Da Vinci Code' had a lot of dialogues and the writing style wasn't made for a movie.

Ron Howard, which I have a lot of respect for as a filmmaker did a poor job on this one. So did Tom Hanks, who I also think highly of. From the beginning, I never felt absolutely confident in the team especially when I learned that Tom Hanks had been casted in the main role. I meant, Tom Hanks? He is a terrific actor, but it was pretty obvious he wasn't fit for the role. The original choice, Bill Paxton would had done a better job, so would many other actors. They only picked Tom Hanks because he's famous.

They didn't need familiar faces for this one; this book sold fifty million copies around the world. The book sold itself, and the movie would have sold itself too with unknown actors. That's the area where the Harry Potter movies succeeded. They didn’t need famous actors for it. If the book sells itself, you don’t need famous actors to sell it. It's just a pity how they let this one go to the dogs. They spent $125,000,000 on this movie and I nearly cricked at some moments. Some that I nearly laughed at but obviously not intended.

The critics were right on the money. This movie is terrible. Better stick to reading just the novel. I'm not even comparing because I don't believe in comparing books to movies due to the fact that they are two completely different media formats. Although I do expect the movies to stay faithful to the core of the stories, and the movie did do that in some areas but failed to capture the thrills that were found in the novel.

However, I do have to make a note of Ian McKellen's wonderful performance. Everybody else turned in a lackluster performance, Tom Hanks mostly stood around and tried to look like a serious professor and say lines to sound intelligent, like "I need to get a library!” Geez. Paul Bettany was not at all a creepy guy; he looked stupid and acted like a baby only to die with a crossed pair of eyes.

I highly recommend you avoid this stinking dud. If you really want to see this movie, rent it when it's out on DVD. It's not worth seeing at the theatres, especially with all the grainy flashback scenes. This would have turned out differently and probably better if they had gotten J.J. Abrams to do this one.

They definitely could have done better.