Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code

Thumbs up, but barely.

First mistake: let Ron Howard direct.  I can just picture the conversation between Dan Brown and his agent:

Agent: "Great news Dan, I got Ron Howard as the director!"
Dan Brown: "Wow, I can't believe it!  How exciting!"

Never a thought about the fact that Ron Howard doesn't do intellectual movies.  Ron Howard is great at action scenes, suspense, and special effects.  But he doesn't know how to deal with art history.  He was faithful to the story, which I appreciated, but his translation to the screen was mostly dull and lifeless.  A good director will take a good story and make it his own.  The better the story, the more this is true.  I have seen terrible Shakespear productions, where the director seemed to be saying: "I'd rather not do this scene, but it's in the play, so here you go."  That's what Howard seemed to be doing most of the time.
Second mistake: don't edit the dialogue.  Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou are fantastic actors.  But they had nothing to work with, and it shows.  It seems to me that they could have done better, but Tom Hanks seems to have looked at the script and said "fuck it."  The only one to shine was Ian McKellan, who really let himself go.

So why is it thumbs up?  Because the truth is the book wasn't that great either. Great plot, great suspense, great subject matter, terrible writing.  But it was good popcorn entertainment: action, suspense, and special effects.  And Audrey Tatou is hot.