THE DA VINCI CODE

by Joe Barber on May.26, 2006, under Joe Barber's Movie Reviews

JOE’S REVIEW:”THE DA VINCI CODE”

It seems most of the critics have it in for director Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s mega-bestseller, “The Da Vinci Code.” I’m not exactly sure why the long knives are out. Perhaps it’s resentment over the many millions of copies of the book that have been sold. Maybe the root of the anger lies in the more than $100 million dollars spent to make the film. In the end, “Code” is a decently crafted piece of Hollywood filmmaking. Howard, his cast and technicians haven’t cheated anyone out of their money. The only thing missing from this thriller are the thrills.

Tom Hanks stars as Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor who studies the ways in which symbols hide and reveal secrets held in the dark corners of history and myth. While giving a speech in Paris, Langdon is drawn into a web of conspiracy and murder. Suspected of murdering the curator of the Louve museum, Langdon must race across Europe to unravel the threads of a plot involving the supression of vitqal information about Jesus and a possible link to human decendents.

As those who have read the book will attest, Robert Langdon is no Indiana Jones. Hanks has portrayed him as a man of science who finds himself becoming a reluctant hero against his will. Hanks plays him that way, delivering a low key performance that may make fans of the book happy, but is likely to leave the casual viewer furstrated and underwhelmed.

Another problem lies with Akiva Goldsman’s screenplay. In order to establish the story as fully as possible, Goldsman jams plenty of detail and dialog into the movie’s first hour, making it talky and somewhat hard to follow. Though things pick up considerably in the second hour, particularly when Sir Ian McKellan shows up as an obsessed Holy Grail expert, the effort to make fans of the book happy leaves non-readers illserved.

Howard, Hanks and the rest of the talented people who worked on this film didn’t set out to make a bad movie. And parts of “Code” are intriguging and even a little thought provoking. But working so hard to please only one part of your potential audience, no matter how big and vocal that group may be, wastes a solid creative effort.

As far as the religous questions the film attempts to bring up, fiction is fiction and that’s what “The Da Vinci Code” is. Give it all the weight any fictionl story has earned. In looking at the overall movie, what we have here is a decent drama, but no masterpiece.

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for profanity ands violence \ JOE’S RATIMG: THREE STARS