Move over, Roger Ebert...

Lost Lost Lost Lost Lost… Oh, the Lost season finale is tonight, in case anyone was wondering. Hold on, I need to go check my Tivo to make sure it’s set up to record… Yes, everything looks good. There was an “incident” (to borrow a Lost expression) a couple months ago when my Tivo decided not to record the show. I usually let about twenty or thirty minutes of the show go by, then start to watch so I can fast-forward through commercials. But during this particular “incident,” none of the show had been recorded, so there was nothing to fast-forward through. Thank goodness for downloadable programs on the internet… I’m a little worried about tonight’s show, as I’ve heard a rather disturbing rumor, which, hopefully, will turn out to be false. Perhaps I’ll post a crazy nonsensical Lost recap tomorrow…

Okay, enough about Lost… So I saw the movie version of The Da Vinci Code last night, and I have to say I was a little disappointed. I loved the book – I’ve enjoyed all of Dan Brown’s novels. And while he isn’t always concerned with getting his facts straight (but it IS, after all, fiction) he’s always managed to keep me interested from the first page to the last. The guy can spin a good yarn.

(And as a quick aside – I have to mention that there are two groups of people who annoy me when it comes to The Da Vinci Code. First are people who read the book and believe every word Dan Brown says, and second are people who read the book and are offended by every word Dan Brown says. Even worse are people who DON’T read the book and decide to be offended by it anyway. How can you be offended if you haven’t read it? Okay, I guess that’s actually three groups of people… Anyway, The Da Vinci Code is, absolutely, a work of FICTION, and should be enjoyed as such. I think perhaps Dan Brown has been having a bit of fun playing devil’s advocate, as I’m sure he, of all people, is well aware of the factual mistakes and misguided assumptions throughout the book. But he’s certainly not going to mention any of that when the whole thing has stirred up such a ridiculous storm of controversy. If more people would understand that the book is simply an entertaining, fast-paced thriller and stop looking at it either as a history book or as heretical dogma, then maybe everyone could have more fun with it.)

So as I was saying – I was a bit disappointed with the movie. The book was so good that it seemed like perfect movie fodder – the kind of book that is destined to be transformed into some kind of cinematic treasure. All the elements were there – murder, mystery, puzzles, codes, chases, mistaken identity, striking locations, eccentric characters – and yet when this story was translated onto a screen, it fell remarkably flat. The most obvious flaw was the casting of Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon – Tom Hanks was able to act with a VOLLEYBALL for two hours in “Castaway” and made it interesting. You’d think there would be nothing this guy couldn’t do. Wrong. He definitely does NOT do “Harvard-symbologist-turned-murder-suspect-turned-code-breaker.” In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tom Hanks acting so listlessly. He and Audrey Tautou (the French actress who was so good in Amelie – great movie, if you’ve never seen it) had absolutely zero chemistry onscreen. There was a scene at the end of the movie where they hug, and it seemed so strange – as if two people who’d just met on a subway decided to hug each other. For at least the first half of the movie, it seems their only purpose, really, is to explain what’s happening in the story... sort of like detached narrators.

And by the way, if you haven’t read the book, I wouldn’t see the movie. I’m not sure it would make much sense to someone who didn’t already understand what was going on. The parts of the movie that deal with the symbols and codes and anagrams – detailed so fascinatingly in the book – are rushed over so quickly that you’ll probably miss them if you blink. You’ll definitely miss them if you run out for a soda and popcorn…

The one real “character” in the movie is Ian McKellen’s Teabing – after an hour of mind-numbing Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou, he’s like a big cup of cappuccino with extra espresso. And Paul Bettany as the albino monk Silas wasn’t bad (although for some reason, Rick started laughing every time he appeared on-screen…). Another thing that made us laugh was this strange repetition of dialogue between characters – one character would say something, and another would repeat it back, as if to make sure the idiot audience understood what was being said:

“So what I’m saying is, the Holy Grail is not a cup.”

“Wait a second! So what you’re saying is, the Holy Grail is not a cup?”

“Da Vinci used codes in his artwork.”

“Wait a second! Da Vinci used codes in his artwork?”

“This dialogue is horrible.”

“This is really bad dialogue!”

So I guess the movie, like the book, can’t be taken too seriously. I’d probably watch it again some time, just to see if I missed some of the subtle nuances of Tom Hanks’ performance. But, as is usually the case when a story of such detail is transformed into celluloid – the book is much better than the movie.