The Da Vinci Code: Caution

[Myles]

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie you probably don't want to be reading this thread. It'll just ruin it for you.

Or will it?

I haven't read the book. I didn't want to because the movie is always worse than the book. Cleverly, I put off reading the book just long enough to see the movie. This would ensure that the movei was fantastic.

Or was it?

Well not really. It was just, well, nothing. It was vanilla, mediocre, just plain average. The storyline has puzzles, but they are just zipped through so fast that you don't even enter the mind of the main character like "A Beautiful Mind" instead you are just watching. Its pretty much like watching someone else do a puzzle for you. The progression is rather predictable and the ending is extremely underwhelming.

So what went wrong?

Well I'll just get the big one out of the way. Tom Hanks sucked. He just was too much himself. He would have flashes of development, but they would easily be destroyed by random action scenes that made you wonder if his character was some kind of superhero at times.

Next, well everyone is part of some secret cult and everyone knows it. I don't see how both of these things can make sense at the same time. They talk about how surrounded in myth everything is for about 30 seconds before launching us into murderous rampages and car chase scenes and never really making this cult feel like it was secret at all.

The puzzles were probably the worst part though. They were like a paint by numbers or something. Find a note, read the note, follow the note, get attacked by bad guy, your princess is in another castle (I mean find another note). Until eventually we find out that the girl is the whole point of the show and she has about 50 people that know who she is.

So where am I going with this?

1. If you did read this without having watched the movie or read the book. Go read the book. Don't ruin it by watching the movie first.

2. Please prove me wrong. Enlighten me as to where I'm undervalueing what I can only call a flop. I expected goosebumps. I expected "A Beautiful Mind", "Gladiator", or "The Matrix" instead I got ... the third Matrix. Basically an entire movie where I'm trying to convince myself that this movie is great until eventually the ending comes and I've failed at doing so.

Now don't get me wrong. I might have even said in the above that the movie was bad. It wasn't bad. The real problem is I expected eleven thumbs up and I got one, maybe one and a half if Ebert is generous.

Basically, if you walk into this movie expecting nothing. You'll probably enjoy it. If you read this post first, you'll probably love the movie, but if you walk into it like me expecting Batman Begins you are going to be sadly mistaken when you realize you just watched Final Fantasy the Spirits within.