Last night, I eagerly went to watch the DaVinci Code movie, despite all the negative reviews and criticisms by the “professional critics”, despite the fact that at RottenTomatoes.com, the film had a 17% rating (it has since gone up to 18%), and despite the fact that “my” religion has called a boycott on the movie. So you may wonder why I would go to watch a movie that seemed to have so much going against it. Well the reason—put simply—is that I didn’t believe the anti-hype…and I was right.
Let’s get one thing out of the way, I liked the book. There, I said it. Although I didn’t think it was Brown’s best book. Angels & Demons was a much better story and will make a better film with more action…that is…if they make it.
I wasn’t too crazy about the choice of Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, and I was right, he didn’t do anything special to the role. I thought Tim Robbins, or—as an off-beat choice—Val Kilmer would have been better-suited for the role. Paul Bettany wasn’t horrible as Silas, but he wasn’t great either. As for the rest of the cast, I thought they were all perfect, especially Ian McKellen as Teabing. He stole the show with his performance.
I thought the film was well done. There wasn’t a lot of action, but there wasn’t much action in the book either. I think the problem is that people are expecting this action-packed thriller when really, the book was more of a mystery novel. I gave the film a 7.5/10. Not great, but perhaps if there wasn’t so much hype over it for the past year, I would have given it a higher score.
Critics biggest problem with the movie was all the talking. Imagine that. Actors speaking in film—not being almost blown up or thrown off subways as they explode or doing physically impossible stunts and surviving a la Tom Cruise in MI:III.
The fact of the matter was—this being a mystery—the talking was necessary to help the audience understand the clues. But I wouldn’t expect movie critics to understand this. I mean, where’s the giant ape scaling the Empire State Building? Where are the CGI dinosaurs?
I don’t expect them to understand, because I don’t think they want to understand it. I think the majority of these critics—and/or the organizations they work for—went into the film with their blindfolds on and their hands over their ears. I think they had their reviews written before they went into the theatre. Oh yes…I think there is a bigger conspiracy happening here. I’ll call it the Rotten Tomatoes Code.
Let’s see, first we’ll compare the rating of the film on IMDB.com—a rating by regular movie goers—they have it rated as a 6.1/10. Wow! That’s quite different from the 1.8/10 that the people who supposedly know movies gave it—especially considering the fact that many religious zealots probably skewed the imdb rating by giving ratings of 1 without even watching the film.
Now, let’s see what kind of movies Rotten Tomatoes rated higher than The DaVinci Code:
- House of Wax: 24%
- Failure to Launch: 28%
- The Shaggy Dog: 28%
- Scary Movie 4: 36%
- Bad News Bears: 47%
- She’s The Man: 46%
- The Ringer: 41%
Dude, Where’s My Car? came in close behind with a 17% rating.
Now, I’m not taking anything away from these fine films…well…actually….yes I am. But really? The Shaggy Dog? Bad News Bears? House of Wax? Better than a film directed by Ron Howard starring Tom Hanks—my criticisms aside—Alfred Molina and Ian McKellen? Really? Doesn’t this make you question the integrity of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes even just a little bit?
I will leave you with my final clue. One of the few positive reviews of the film came from Roger Ebert. Now there is a known name. Certainly not one without reproach, but a familiar one nonetheless and one that we may gauge the rest by. He wrote the following in the little excerpt provided by Rotten Tomatoes:
“The movie works; it’s involving, intriguing and constantly seems on the edge of startling revelations.”
That seems nice, I wonder what else he had to say in his Chicago Sun-Times review of the film. Oh wait…what is this?…the link to his review…it seems to not be working…I wonder why…could it be that a major American publication has allowed the link to a review written by one of the most famous film critics in America about the second-highest grossing opening film—behind only Star Wars Episode III—to be broken? The answer is no. If you do a quick search, you’ll find the review right where it should be on the newspaper’s site. So that leaves us to question why Rotten Tomatoes hasn’t found this error out and fixed it. Dun..dun..DUM!
Incidentally, even in Ebert’s positive review of the book, he wastes no opportunity to infuse his own opinion on religion and the theories brought up in the book. He bashes Dan Brown’s writing mercilessly and then turns around and praises Ron Howard’s adaptation. This makes me wonder if Ebert has ever had a negative opinion of a Ron Howard or Tom Hanks movie. I’m going to guess…no.
I’m not going to sit here and tell you all that you must see this film, I know many of you won’t give it a fair shake even if you do. I just want to let you know that as a fan of the book, it wasn’t as disappointing as you will be lead to believe. In fact, I think that the bigger fan of the book you were, the more you’ll enjoy the film. They explain a lot of things from the book that I was afraid wouldn’t make the final cut in the film.
There were a few changes to the story—including some things at the end of the film—but they didn’t bother me much and once the credits began to role and the lights came up, people clapped. So I guess there weren’t any professional critics in that crowd.