Yay.. On annual leave.. Doctoring is hard!!! But holidays are awesome.. :o) xx
Yay.. On annual leave.. Doctoring is hard!!! But holidays are awesome.. :o) xx
Member since:19.09.2002
Reviews:42
Members who trust:7
The Da Vinci Code; 2006; Directed by Ron Howard; Rated 12
Anyone who has heard me speak of The Da Vinci Code will know my opinion on it; an opinion I stand by having seen the movie. This is a fabulous story, brimming with intrigue, scandal and almost managing to pass itself off as fact. The big disappointment is that it was not written very well at all. Now, no disrespect to Dan Brown, he has made an awful lot of money off these books and got his agenda recognised and imprinted into the collective conciousness. I'm not saying I could write these particular books any better than he did (dropping all modesty for a second, I could definitely re-write/edit them and make them a lot better than they are, but they are already best-sellers thousands of times over). Please don't be offended die-hard Dan Brown fans; this is just me being a literary snob. And you have got to agree; good ideas he has, but Charles Dickens he ain't. Anyway, my major gripe with the books was that they read like movies; The Da Vinci Code inparticular. He obviously wrote this with the sole purpose of selling it as a film in later years and from reading the book, you are left thinking, by god this will be a FANTASTIC film. It had real potential.... Had...
Sadly though, the Da Vinci Code movie, simply fails to deliver. It misses the "Awesome" mark so widely that it doesn't even graze the target and sinks forgettably to the bottom of the pool of mediocrity.
I am not going to re-hash the plot again, as everyone in the known universe seems to be regrettably familiar with the conspiracy theories surrounding this book. However, the film abridges and brazenly alters the original book to an abominable degree. Occasionally it even cuts out things that really can't afford to be cut out!! There was simply
no need for this, in my opinion. The book was self-contained. The book should have been the movie; word for word, cover to cover. That is how it was written and I am certain that was how it was intended.
Akiva Goldsmans screenplay seems to sacrifice the creation of believable characters for the endless debate of minutiae of the conspiracy details. This was a risky gamble and inevitably it didn't pay off. If nobody cares about the characters, it doesn't matter what they are talking about. They could be revealing the meaning of life in dramatic yet bite-sized chunks and the bored audience would still be picking it's fingernails and yawning. By the time you reach the end of the film and supposedly glorious moment of the revelation of the Holy Grail's location is finally reached, you couldn't begin to care less and are rummaging in your pockets, wondering when the whole debacle is going to be over.
When the movie came out, it received mixed reviews. The general consensus (among my friends at least) seemed to be, if you had read the book, you hated it. If you hadn't read the book and were at least a little unfamiliar with the concepts therein, you loved it. As a stand-alone film, I guess it is passable. The main criticism I would have, disregarding the influence of the book, is that it maintains this sense of being unbearably pretenious, without any real intellectual value. And that is a bad combination. That same criticism stands for the book. But comparing both book and film, all I can say is, it really had potential. It could have been done so much better.
**** Performances ******
Tom Hanks plays wise, old (yet still apparently hunky) Prof Robert Langdon. If you have read the book, you will know that this part was blatantly written for Harrisson Ford. The Prof is an Indiana Jones stylee intellectual cum action-adventure hero (if somewhat reluctant hero). However, despite this seemingly cringeworthy casting, Hanks does a damn good job and without a doubt, he pulls it off. He almost manages to make Langdons little epiphany moments look believeable. There is no doubt that Hanks is one of the greats; never quite devastatingly sexy, but he does have that cheeky charm.
Audrey Tatou sadly now annoys me. Not as a person, obviously; but as an actress. It's reasonably bizarre. I had a lot of respect for her after Dirty Pretty Things; I loved that movie and the part she played in it. I think my inherent dislike of her as an actress came last year. It was a side effect of Amelie; I just hated it with every particle of my being. What some saw as magical, I saw as twee and actually more than a little stupid. And I do believe that movie has ruined her, in my eyes. Sadly, I am very stubborn and single minded (it's a negative trait and believe me, I do try to get by it). I think it will take a cinematic masterpiece with her dazzling in the starring role to restore Tatou to the top of my leading ladies list. But I do hope it happens!! And here she delivers an unbeleivable, two-dimensional performance as Sophie Neveu, the charismatic cryptology genius. It's not entirely her fault though; in fact, mostly not her fault. The character she had to work with was both unbelievable and two dimensional to begin with.
Good old British boy, Paul Bettany, plays creepy albino monk, Silas, with both flair and passion. This cannot have been an easy role to take on, but he brings it to life impeccably. Viscerally painful scenes of self-flagellation, puncutuated with perfectly accented Italian and those hollow eyes combine to make the whole thing more than a little unsettling. Weirdly enough, he still manages to be undeniably gorgeous. Maybe that's just me!!!
Ian McKellen as Leigh Teabing; what more can I say? Ian McKellen is Ian McKellen; the legend that is. By simply appearing in a film, he lends it a certain prestige.
And the rest.... who unfortunately I do not have time to mention....
There is no noticably bad acting in this film, which is, in itself a hell of an achievement nowadays. A bad film with consistent good acting can only be the product of an awful script. For that, I blame the writer of the screenplay cross-bred with the writer of the novel. A badly written novel with what appears to be only its worst bits translated onto the screen.
***** DVD ****** The DVD comes with a whole disc of special features; mostly inimaginative interviews with all and sundry that were ever involved in the making of the film. Wholly uninteresting. The only special feature that is vaguely interesting is "The Codes of the Da Vinci Code", but then again, it contains nothing that hasn't been done, re-done and rereleased 40,000 times on network TV in the last 3 years. If you have the double-disc set, don't watch the special features. It's a couple of hours of your life you will never get back. The interview with the author is particularly dull and pseudo-intellectual. I really have far too much to do with my time to spend it listening to Dan Brown's verbal diarrhoea pouring from my TV screen.
**** In Conclusion **** It seems to me that what we have here is a reasonable book, a really good director (A Beautiful Mind, to name one), a fabulous cast and a seemingly limitless special effects budget (don't get me started on the CGI pagans and crusades... oh dear god..). Presented with this information, one would assume that the resulting film would be at the very least entertaining and gripping. However, the result is at best mediocre and at worst, bloody awful.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Thriller - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Timothy West, Neil Morrissey, Tara Fitzgerald, Annette Crosbie, Pauline Quirke, Rob Brydon, Denise Van Outen, John Thomson, Kevin Whately, David Suchet
Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: Bharat Nalluri, Rob Bailey, Andy Wilson - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Matthew MacFadyen, Keeley Hawes, David Oyelowo, Peter Firth, Jenny Agutter, Lisa Faulkner
Hated the film, hated the book, liked your review!
nemesis2004 29.03.2008 15:36
I didn't think the book nor the film were THAT bad. I've certainly read and seen much better, but I don't regret it. Great review.
tranx 27.07.2007 19:08
A very good review as far as the acting was concerned because I entirely agree. The point about the deviation from the book was not so well taken because, like many who have not read it, this was irrelevant for me. I was initially put off when the film was so much hyped and so I have only just got round to seeing it, but thought it was ok because of the production and acting, and having heard about the book theories thought the hypothesis here stood up rather better
Critics and controversy aside,The Da Vinci Codeis a verifiable blockbuster. Combine the ... more
film's huge worldwide box-office take with over 100 million copies of Dan Brown's book sold, and The Da Vinci Code has clearly made the leap from pop-culture hit to...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Dan Brown's international bestseller comes alive in the film The Da Vinci Code, directed ... more
By Academy Award Winner Ron Howard (2001 Directing, A Beautiful Mind). Join symbologist Robert Langdon (Academy Award Winner Tom Hanks, 1993 Best Actor, Philadelph...
![The Da Vinci Code (2 Disc Special Edition) [DVD] [2006]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78501039.jpg "The Da Vinci Code (2 Disc Special Edition) [DVD] [2006]")
Dec 28th, 2006
exceptional by (3%):
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