The Da Vinci Code (Movie)
May. 24th, 2006 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperSo, as previously posted, we had a big morale event at Real today to go and see The Da Vinci Code. I left work around 1pm to walk over to the theater, which apparently startled several of my coworkers--heh. A bunch of busses had been lined up to run folks over to the theater, but I figured that I needed the walk anyway. And although the weather was being erratic, one of my coworkers walked with me, so that was pleasant.
They handed out a bunch of vouchers for free soda and popcorn, which I avoided. And we had a nice full house, and some trailers that ranged from interesting to not so much--Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (which looked scary and gripping and although it's pretty much all about preaching to the choir as far as I'm concerned, I found myself thinking, yeah, I should go see that), Miami Vice (oh my no), Cars (a longer trailer than I'd seen before, though it's not yet convincing me it'll be as cool as other Pixar works), Lady in the Water (not interesting), and Click (which I won't go see, though this trailer made it less goofy looking than I expect from an Adam Sandler flick).
As for the movie itself? Didn't suck as much as I was expecting--but on the other hand, it wasn't good, either. But I'll also say that I was actually entertained by the flick, enough that I went "okay, yeah, fine, I'll buy the book" (and I picked it up at the Barnes and Noble on the bottom floor of Pacific Place after). So yeah, the Seattle Times review that gave it two stars was about right.
Okay, where to start with the problems?
Pacing-wise, I wouldn't say 'great', but I would say 'mostly decent'. There were bits that felt draggy to me, particularly at the very end after the Big Final Secret is revealed and I'm thinking, "okay, so when does the story actually end already?" I've seen reviewers complain about the pace being bogged down by big chunks of exposition, and I can't really dispute that--I think though that it's a consequence of the male lead character, Langdon, being a professor. So naturally you're going to get quite a bit of him spouting off about his field of expertise as he draws upon his skills to figure out what the hell is going on.
The problem for me was, though, that Tom Hanks didn't have quite the right presence to make that kind of thing really interesting. Ian McKellen? God yes. He was fabulous, throwing a big chunk of historical data at our hero and heroine, chunks which in the hands of a lesser actor would have been yawn-o-rama city. But Sir Ian doled out all the clues with such great glee and pleasure that you couldn't help but get interested in what he was saying.
Hanks, on the other hand, was just kind of bland. The book (which I have now started as of the writing of this post) has a bit at the beginning where a magazine article about Langdon describes him as "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed"--and as any fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark will know, young Harrison Ford in professorial mode is quite, quite fun indeed; just look at the scene at the beginning of Raiders where Indy and Brody are explaining the background of the Ark to the skeptical intelligence agents. In this film, though, Hanks doesn't rise to that level of panache. He does show a few sparks of passion in his character's field of interest once he gets into debating stuff with Ian McKellen's character, but I think that's more of a credit to McKellen than praise of Hanks, that he pulled Hanks up to his level and got him interacting with him. And I will also add that okay, yeah, I felt for Langdon where he got wiggy about his claustrophobia, and Hanks conveyed that well when it came up in the movie. His general air of ruffled bemusement was not out of place for an acamedic thrown into the situation he'd been thrown into as well, it's just that I think he needed a little more there there.
Especially when he intoned in such serious tones, "I've got to get to a library--fast!" Sorry, Tom. I've liked other things I've seen you do well enough, but you just did not deliver that line in a way that could make me take you seriously. Sigh. :)
I did kind of like Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu, though. Towards the end, with that sort of clear porcelain beauty she had about her, I could almost begin to buy what was being set up about her background. And the little jokes she made to Langdon, sticking her foot against the surface of the pond and then adding that maybe she'd do better with the wine, were genuinely funny. ;)
Paul Bettany as Silas the monk--okay, yeah, genuinely creepy. And though I winced as one might expect at the bits where Silas was flogging himself, the parts that creeped me out the most about Silas were just those repeated shots of him staring almost blankly ahead into space, like he was looking into another plane of existence.
And speaking of Raiders of the Lost Ark--heh, I recognized the dude playing Bishop Aringarosa when I saw him, though for the life of me I couldn't remember where I'd seen him before. Looking him up now, I realize that he was Doc Ock in the second Spiderman flick, but he was also Satipo in Raiders. Y'know, the one who goes, "You throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!" I will remember him as that character until the day I die, I think. Which is not to say that he did badly as the Bishop in this film, just that he didn't do anything that stood out for me as memorable enough to override my impressions of his earlier characters.
Jean Reno as Captain Fache was pretty good. I didn't remember immediately who he was, either, but eventually realized that I'd seen him before in The Professional. He played this character fairly similarly, on the shady side of things, but driven by his own ethics in a way.
Plot-wise, overall... it was hard to really be surprised by any of it, thanks to the hype the story has gotten in general. I of course knew the "Big Secret" that was being protected was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were supposed to have married and have had children, so naturally that meant that the idea of Sophie being their last living descendant came as no surprise. And without the edge of that, the plot became pretty much the standard "hero being pursued for a crime he didn't commit running all over the world to find the clues that will save his ass" scenario. Things really only got interesting for me once Ian McKellen came on camera, and there, yeah, we had a couple of interesting twists, though again, nothing genuinely surprising.
Cinematography-wise... there were some neat effects done for bits where Langdon was drawing on his knowledge and his acute memory to try to figure stuff out, where you saw ghostly images spring up around Tom Hanks. That was pretty neat. On the other hand, there was also a car chase that was filmed in a bit of a jumble. The scenes in the Louvre were suitably dark and creepy; some of the external scenery shots, especially at the end, were nice. So kind of hit and miss for me in that department.
All in all... not truly sucky, but not particularly good either.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cafiorello's take on the book applies for me here--don't take it too seriously, don't set your expectations very high, and with those caveats, it was entertaining enough.
They handed out a bunch of vouchers for free soda and popcorn, which I avoided. And we had a nice full house, and some trailers that ranged from interesting to not so much--Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (which looked scary and gripping and although it's pretty much all about preaching to the choir as far as I'm concerned, I found myself thinking, yeah, I should go see that), Miami Vice (oh my no), Cars (a longer trailer than I'd seen before, though it's not yet convincing me it'll be as cool as other Pixar works), Lady in the Water (not interesting), and Click (which I won't go see, though this trailer made it less goofy looking than I expect from an Adam Sandler flick).
As for the movie itself? Didn't suck as much as I was expecting--but on the other hand, it wasn't good, either. But I'll also say that I was actually entertained by the flick, enough that I went "okay, yeah, fine, I'll buy the book" (and I picked it up at the Barnes and Noble on the bottom floor of Pacific Place after). So yeah, the Seattle Times review that gave it two stars was about right.
Okay, where to start with the problems?
Pacing-wise, I wouldn't say 'great', but I would say 'mostly decent'. There were bits that felt draggy to me, particularly at the very end after the Big Final Secret is revealed and I'm thinking, "okay, so when does the story actually end already?" I've seen reviewers complain about the pace being bogged down by big chunks of exposition, and I can't really dispute that--I think though that it's a consequence of the male lead character, Langdon, being a professor. So naturally you're going to get quite a bit of him spouting off about his field of expertise as he draws upon his skills to figure out what the hell is going on.
The problem for me was, though, that Tom Hanks didn't have quite the right presence to make that kind of thing really interesting. Ian McKellen? God yes. He was fabulous, throwing a big chunk of historical data at our hero and heroine, chunks which in the hands of a lesser actor would have been yawn-o-rama city. But Sir Ian doled out all the clues with such great glee and pleasure that you couldn't help but get interested in what he was saying.
Hanks, on the other hand, was just kind of bland. The book (which I have now started as of the writing of this post) has a bit at the beginning where a magazine article about Langdon describes him as "Harrison Ford in Harris tweed"--and as any fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark will know, young Harrison Ford in professorial mode is quite, quite fun indeed; just look at the scene at the beginning of Raiders where Indy and Brody are explaining the background of the Ark to the skeptical intelligence agents. In this film, though, Hanks doesn't rise to that level of panache. He does show a few sparks of passion in his character's field of interest once he gets into debating stuff with Ian McKellen's character, but I think that's more of a credit to McKellen than praise of Hanks, that he pulled Hanks up to his level and got him interacting with him. And I will also add that okay, yeah, I felt for Langdon where he got wiggy about his claustrophobia, and Hanks conveyed that well when it came up in the movie. His general air of ruffled bemusement was not out of place for an acamedic thrown into the situation he'd been thrown into as well, it's just that I think he needed a little more there there.
Especially when he intoned in such serious tones, "I've got to get to a library--fast!" Sorry, Tom. I've liked other things I've seen you do well enough, but you just did not deliver that line in a way that could make me take you seriously. Sigh. :)
I did kind of like Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu, though. Towards the end, with that sort of clear porcelain beauty she had about her, I could almost begin to buy what was being set up about her background. And the little jokes she made to Langdon, sticking her foot against the surface of the pond and then adding that maybe she'd do better with the wine, were genuinely funny. ;)
Paul Bettany as Silas the monk--okay, yeah, genuinely creepy. And though I winced as one might expect at the bits where Silas was flogging himself, the parts that creeped me out the most about Silas were just those repeated shots of him staring almost blankly ahead into space, like he was looking into another plane of existence.
And speaking of Raiders of the Lost Ark--heh, I recognized the dude playing Bishop Aringarosa when I saw him, though for the life of me I couldn't remember where I'd seen him before. Looking him up now, I realize that he was Doc Ock in the second Spiderman flick, but he was also Satipo in Raiders. Y'know, the one who goes, "You throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!" I will remember him as that character until the day I die, I think. Which is not to say that he did badly as the Bishop in this film, just that he didn't do anything that stood out for me as memorable enough to override my impressions of his earlier characters.
Jean Reno as Captain Fache was pretty good. I didn't remember immediately who he was, either, but eventually realized that I'd seen him before in The Professional. He played this character fairly similarly, on the shady side of things, but driven by his own ethics in a way.
Plot-wise, overall... it was hard to really be surprised by any of it, thanks to the hype the story has gotten in general. I of course knew the "Big Secret" that was being protected was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were supposed to have married and have had children, so naturally that meant that the idea of Sophie being their last living descendant came as no surprise. And without the edge of that, the plot became pretty much the standard "hero being pursued for a crime he didn't commit running all over the world to find the clues that will save his ass" scenario. Things really only got interesting for me once Ian McKellen came on camera, and there, yeah, we had a couple of interesting twists, though again, nothing genuinely surprising.
Cinematography-wise... there were some neat effects done for bits where Langdon was drawing on his knowledge and his acute memory to try to figure stuff out, where you saw ghostly images spring up around Tom Hanks. That was pretty neat. On the other hand, there was also a car chase that was filmed in a bit of a jumble. The scenes in the Louvre were suitably dark and creepy; some of the external scenery shots, especially at the end, were nice. So kind of hit and miss for me in that department.
All in all... not truly sucky, but not particularly good either.
cafiorello's take on the book applies for me here--don't take it too seriously, don't set your expectations very high, and with those caveats, it was entertaining enough.