Of the reviews of The Da Vinci Code that have streamed in since its release last year, there seems to be a template, adhered to on a relatively frequent basis, for success and credibilty. It is, first and foremost, necessary to make clear two bits of personal information: (1) whether you've read Dan Brown's impossibly controversial source book or not, and what you thought about it, and (2) what religious faith, if any, you practice, and how that informs your opinion of the massive rift that seems to propel much of Da Vinci Code's immense popularity. This sort of clamoring for attention and self-righteous belief that anyone cares about your pithy little personal life leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and an intense desire to smack those who adhere to the pressure of our little mini-society.

And then again, I'm a whore for what the public wants, so if my affiliations with both organized religion and Dan Brown fiction make for a fuller review, then so be it! I've read Brown's novel, yes, and I'll discuss it in length as it pertains to the film later; more pertinently, have my religious beliefs caused me to give The Da Vinci Code the less-than-enthusiastic rating that you've no doubt noticed I've bestowed upon it?

My faith falls under the broader umbrella of Christianity; denominations and sects don't really matter in the long run (come on, you know they don't), so why bother you with the specifics? Allow me to say, first off, that my critique of Da Vinci Code isn't faith-based; honestly, I'm mystified by the sheer level of controversy, and the fact that this film has been the jumping-off point for so many protests, boycotts, and defensive sermons. Then again, bear in mind that my mindset is rarely aligned with what the Christian population at large thinks; most of 'em stopped taking what I said seriously after we disagreed on gay marriage, George W. Bush, and The Passion of the Christ. I'm not offended by the film's implication that there could be living descendants of Jesus Christ; in fact, I think it's a fascinating idea, truthful or otherwise, and more Christians should be provoked into genuine intellectual thought (gasp!) by this than repulsed by such extra-doctrinal claims.

With that out of the way, it becomes clear that there's no reason for me to attack The Da Vinci Code. I can hold nothing against it except that it's not a very good film.

**

In a way, Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code is as faithful and accurate an adaptation of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" that could have possibly been made; that is to say, it's every bit as plodding, unremarkable, and stuffed with unfulfilled potential as the source novel. Howard's direction is the exact cinematic counterpart to Brown's prose: that is, it's so average (and in such a loping, ho-hum manner) that it becomes more unbearable than if it were flagrantly bad, because it's unwilling to fail with style. Then again, Brown's prose is only not-bad if we're comparing it to, say, an eighth grade term paper of medium difficulty: this was one of the hardest books I've ever had to read, because the length of time spent on it is stretched out to such an indeterminable amount by the time you account for every time your eyes landed on a creaky cliche (or a fragment of flat-footed dialogue) and you had to stop to roll your eyes and sigh "oh, come on." [This makes me think that a drinking game based on "The Da Vinci Code" --if they made drinking games based on books-- would render you so wasted by the first few chapters that the last seventy chapters would be a blur. "Dude, I was reading Da Vinci last night and I was so trashed" doesn't have that triumphant ring to it, though.]

Which brings us to the film, and if we're judging Ron Howard's directorial work (and Akiva Goldsman's screenplay, which is just marginally better than his Batman and Robin) by how intact disappointment can travel from one medium to the other, The Da Vinci Code is a success. Those of us who still like to judge our films on the basis of entertainment, emotional resonance, or intellectual stimulation, however, will have to settle for being extremely disenchanted by this globe-trotting romp through mediocrity.

The story, I'm sure, is as widely known as The Passion's at this point, but for those concerned with that sort of thing: a murder in the Louvre, in which the slain museum curator decorates his body and the surrounding area with a series of symbols before he dies, finds "professor of symbology" Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks, genuinely uninteresting) embroiled in a game of cat-and-mouse running from the cops who think he's the culprit (and a nutjob wing of the Catholic church hell-bent on keeping the information that Langdon stumbles upon hush-hush), all the while deciphering an elaborate code that leads him (and sidekick Audrey Tautou, also uninteresting but extremely cute) to Big Important Historical Truths and Cover-Ups.

All of this I'd be inclined to care about if the movie were made with the level of enjoyment and panache as Joel Schumacher's National Treasure; in the pantheon of mildly Indiana Jones-inspired movies of recent years, Da Vinci falls short of Schumacher's unexpected delight, but does manage to one-up Matthew McConaughey's atomic turd Saraha. But it's not, and everything about this movie is so by-the-numbers I wanted to shriek through my clenched teeth. This is a film (and a book, since they're both so equally lame) that manages to make incendiary claims about religious history but can't even tread water when it comes to making all this interesting. There's not a lick of suspense in the whole films, entire passages could be slept through without being of any ultimate consequence to the viewer... in fact, it seems to me that many passages were slept through, usually by the actors. (The somnambulant cast is given a slight energy boost, it should be said, by the fantastic Ian McKellen, who seems to genuinely delight in potraying his character as absolutely mad and would manage to be infectious, too, if only he were stuck in a better movie; the film's other widely-praised performance, by Paul Bettany as the creepy albino monk Silas, isn't anything to write home about, not as it pertains to this film or Bettany's career as a usually-engaging character actor. He just kind of stands around and glowers a lot.)

What the film amounts to, then, is film noir revelations wrapped up in a tight "high art as entertainment" package: there's the clunky dialogue, the dramatic revelations made solely through monologuing and said clunky dialogue, and eleventh-hour revelations that pretty much amount to "ha! I'm bad, and you didn't even know it till now." Even this would all be forgivable in a tight (if forgettable) 90-minute film, but at 149 minutes, there's far too much time to be filled, and plenty of unexciting downtime to reflect on how utterly interesting and shoddily-made this film is. Raiders of the Lost Ark this ain't. Hell, National Treasure this ain't.

Which bothers me, because I don't think it would have been all that difficult to make The Da Vinci Code good. I was excited about the idea that it could be a better movie than a book, but Howard and Goldsman's clumsy transposing techniques turn it into the sort of plodding DOA talk-thriller that the source material seems destined to yield. But what if somebody had devoted the time and effort to make The Da Vinci Code good, instead of being content to keep it the sort of mind-dulling pablum the public can suck up without having to truly dedicate intellectual thought to? What if it had been a little bit darker, a little bit more exciting, a little bit more streamlined? What if somebody played Robert Langdon who doesn't look as thoroughly uncomfortable being Robert Langdon as Tom Hanks does in this film? What if it were filmed in such a way that the audience was actually confronted with the difficult nature of the revisionist history presented on-screen, and were forced to actually think, rather than the film's characters thinking for you and fooling you into thinking you're devoting real brainpower to this film? The ideas behind The Da Vinci Code --history reimagined and globe-trotting codebreaking-- are potent, but the execution, both literary and cinematic, is limp.

When you get right down to it, The Da Vinci Code isn't about Jesus at all. It's not about Mary Magdalene, it's not about the Catholic Church, and it's certainly not about Robert Langdon, who is certain to go down in film history as one of suspense film's most unremarkable heroes ever. The Da Vinci Code is about something far more sinister and disturbing: the public's willingness to accept that which the rest of the public tells them is good. The true "con of man" is not willful deception practiced by the Vatican; it's the hype machine grinding out another completely unremarkable and unsettlingly mediocre phenomenon. Blah is all I can say to The Da Vinci Code in all its forms.





Recommended: No