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Well, this is the first movie I’ve seen in theaters for the summer blockbuster season, and although I just saw it Sunday, 2 days after it came out, most of it’s reviews said it was ok, but that was just it. There wasn’t really anything special. It was just ok. I have to agree somewhat…

Ron Howard, who started his career as an actor in such movies as George Lucas’s “American Graffiti” later took off in his film career as a director producer, and much more. He’s done A LOT of stuff. I wide range of things actually, he’s worked on tv shows like 24 and kids movies like “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”. So when I heard he was doing “The Da Vinci Code” I had my hopes up that it would be a good movie. To tell you the truth, it was what I expected almost exactly. A good repesentation of the book, but that’s not always good.

The movie is very faithful to the book. There’s no major plot points cut out, though there are a few minor changes and it expands on things only briefly mentioned, like Tom Hank’s character falling into the well when he was a child - they kind of show it in a flashback. It also has all of the same characters. The locations that they visit like the Louvre are all great and obvioulsy real. I feel that someone considering seeing the movie as opposed to the book would get the right feel - it hits the same note as the book.

The acting by Tom Hanks is good. I think that he was a good choice to play Robert Langdon, but his acting was still a little bit wooden, a little much like he didn’t care. The character of Sophie I think could have had a better actor. I mean, she just didn’t really express the character of Sophie in the book. She seemed all closed up. But Silas, the bad guy who is kinda the apprentice to “The Teacher” who’s supposed to be all evil-ish. You know - Silas is the one who carries out all of the murders - Anyway, the guy who they got to do him was great. He was an albino, as said in the book, and gave off the right feel, scary, but not TOO scary. Also, the scenes where he was torturing himself were great. I think he was the best actor of the film, although he didn’t say that much. Sir Leah Teabing, the elderly man who helps Langdon and Sohpie was played by Ian Mckellen was also great, almost equal to Silas. He was a bit over the top in the acting, but he delivered a great performance throughout. The other actors were fairly well chosen, but I won’t go into much detail as they were more minor characters.
The music by Hans Zimmer I think did the book a lot of justice. It was very religous with lots of vocals. I think that it’s a very good choice to go along with the movie. Still, it lacks a good recurring theme throughout that would have been nice to bring it all together. The music just kind of sits in the background, not usually noticible to an un-trained ear. It helps move the story along and it kind of connects the scenes to the events that they’re talking about in history involving the Church, Priory of Sion, and Jesus Christ’s bloodline.

Speaking of Jesus Christ’s bloodline, I counted at least 4 times in the movie where it was emphasised that this was just a THEORY, even a MYTH. In fact, Langdon and Teabing had a little friendly arguement in the movie about whether the theory had enough evidence to support it. And in another note, I think that in bashing against this movie and the book it was based on, the church is just proving what the book says about them is true - that they will do whatever they can to keep people’s faith true, to believe in God, in the church, etc. Besides, there are plenty reminders throughout the movie that the theory is just a theory.

So overall, this movie is good, but it just lacks anything unique. It’s acting isn’t bad, the story is pretty good, but the pace of the movie is so fast in the beginning and long in the end - but hey, what did I expect from a movie that literally was signed on months after the book came out. (It takes about 3 years to make movies these days.)

[rating:3]