The Da Vinci Code

Dang! Beaten to the punch by Parsons at work. Again!

Must strive to make my review different. I know! Change the font....

Right. The Da Vinci code.

Ignore what the film critics tell you about this film. They're wrong. Which means, ignore me, because I (like everyone here) am a critic, albeit for a small audience. Which means don't ignore me......

It's a strange name, given Da Vinci (and his work) feature only briefly at best. I hadn't read the book, and don't really intend to, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This film is a lot darker than I was expecting, and I mean that in the literal sense. The film has less light in scenes that the trailers would have you believe. Tom Hanks' hair is nowhere near as distracting or annoying as I thought it would be. Maybe I was distracted by the lovely Audrey Tautou. Rowr....

The film starts with a murder and ends....well, I wouldn't want to spoil it for you. It does get a little sledge-hammery towards the end, but this is forgivable given the heavy (and rather wordy, by all accounts) nature of the source material.

The film is lovingly shot, which you'd expect from a Ron Howard movie. It also steals it's soundtrack from a previous movie. Again, something you'd expect from a Ron Howard movie. The soundtrack was a little too similar to National Treasure for my liking, and since they both feature references to the Knights Templar (and use quite similar flashbacks to their demise), I found I focused on this. That's just how my mind works though.

I think this movie suffers heavily from HarryPotter-ism. People who've read the book enjoy the film a lot less than those who haven't. I liked it.

Really?, you ask. Well, put it this way. I'm seriously tempted to go and see it again, and as you all know, I only do that with Star Trek movies, and the now infamous "Night Of Three Times" when I saw Galaxy Quest three times on the same day.

You'll enjoy it, as long as you accept it for what it is: a ripping yarn. It's not historical drama, it's a thriller. It's just, like all good thrillers, it's based on what could have happened.

I've also come to the conclusion that film critics don't know what the hell they're talking about. Which bodes badly for me, I guess....

OQ: '...s'il vous plait...'

Score: B+ It's a darn good movie, and I'll own it on DVD when it's available.

Trivia: As a piece of trivia, Paul Bettany was interviewed on Jonathan Ross and was how he felt working with Tom Hanks for the first time. "Well, the first day it was very nervous. I mean, he's never been in a Paul Bettany movie before..."

There is a small prize of 500 kudos for the first person to tell me how many words I've invented for the purpose of this review.