*1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Jean Reno, Ian McKellan, Alfred Molina, Jurgen Prochnow, and Paul Bettany
Directed by Ron Howard & written for the screen by Akiva Goldsman, from the “novel” by Dan Brown
2006
142 min PG13
It just drags on and on and on. “The Da Vinci Code” is an exposition-heavy “thriller” that really will surprise you with its levelness of badness. We follow yet still another couple on the run from villains who can’t shoot straight and cops slightly less incompetent than the graduates of “Police Academy.” They run, he explains things, they run, he explains more things. Every “twist” is obvious 20 minutes before it happens, characters narrate things that we can see for ourselves, and the villain is exactly who you expect he’ll be. And I’m not using “he” in the gender neutral sense—if you think the one woman in this whole movie is the heavy you’re a cokehead.
I almost started to enjoy myself when the dialogue veered into Ed Wood territory but “Da Vinci” could only maintain that level of absurdity for a couple of minutes. Every puzzle the hero (Tom Hanks) solves is of such mind-boggling complexity and erudition that we can’t possibly join him in its solution. He might as well just be saying “reverse the polarity!” every 15 minutes.
Most of this would be forgivable, even laudable, if “The Da Vinci Code” had been filmed correctly, i.e., as giddy pulp nonsense. Instead, the movie is so ridiculously serious, apparently unaware of the level of sophistication inherent in billion-copy-selling paperbacks written by guys with only two syllables in their names. I mean, for the love of God, the villain gives one of his henchmen something to drink, and it’s poisoned, and did it occur to no one in the production of this film that something so trite should be played for laughs? Every performance is uninspired, save Paul Bettany’s murderous albino monk, who seems to have broken in from the parallel universe where “Da Vinci” is treated more like “National Treasure.”
The movie crystallizes the stance of “Church-as-lying-woman-oppressor” pretty well—which 9 out of 10 “-ism” movie critics will relish explaining to you in smug detail—but for all its yakkity-yak about “Sacred Feminine” its one female character (Audrey Tautou) is always having to be rescued by our dashing white boy hero. “Da Vinci” also portrays agnosticism/skepticism as a colossal lack of imagination: because most men have wives and children, well, Jesus must have obviously had them too. It’s only normal! When people say this, all I can hear is the stunned ejaculations of junior high friends telling me “how can you live without cable?!” As for Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ wife (a possibility handled much more perceptively in “The Last Temptation of Christ”), we all know the Catholics would never, ever have you do anything even close to venerating a female figure reproductively attached to Jesus, especially not one named Mary.
Saying that Jesus bore a royal bloodline may be romantic and call to mind knights and damsels, but it is also a reactionary step, when we all know Jesus was a liberal (I know because a bumper sticker told me so). Jesus was a king (of sorts), but—unlike virtually every religious figure before him—he democratized religion by NOT having an heir, because monarchy is stupid, and by throwing open salvation to all peoples, not just the Israelites. And, you know, maybe he didn’t want a wife and an heir because he didn’t want to divide his loyalties between his family and the crucifix. Considerate, really.
This lack of imagination is not surprising, considering the movie is the work of the vanilla-bland and regularly unimaginative duo of director Ronnie Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman. They brought us the snoozer “Cinderella Man” and the conventionally intriguing “A Beautiful Mind.” To “Da Vinci” they bring lumpy, inert gloss; there is neither humor nor irony nor do they orchestrate any good action sequences. At best they bring some of novelist Dan Brown’s ideas to the screen cinematically, as grainy flashbacks (admittedly kind of cool), but they are content to have Tom Hanks and Ian McKellan lecture us most of the time. Yet Opie and Akiva have more Oscars for writing and directing than Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Spike Lee, Brian De Palma, Terry Malick, David Mamet, and Wong Kar-Wai combined. Maybe Opie needs to go to Emmet’s Fix-It shop to fix Emmet.
At least I got to see the long trailer for “Miami Vice.” It is looking more and more like the play is gonna call for them to get down.
Finished June 7th, 2006
Copyright (c) 2006 Friday & Saturday Night
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