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The best
part of the movie was before it started, when some well-dressed
old man with a cane had trouble scooting past us in the row
and replied to Franke’s somewhat condescending “You
alright?” with a without-missing-a-beat “I think
my ass is facing the wrong direction” as his crotch
passed in front of Franke’s face.
Otherwise
I was kind of distracted by the football-shaped cell phone
ear attachment thing one of the kids in the row in front of
us was wearing, and then totally distracted once the cell
phone ear attachment thing started emitting/blinking a radioactive
blue light, the ridiculous sci-fi-ishness of which plunged
me into a state of captivated annoyance I couldn’t shake
until snapped out of it by the impromptu competition between
Hanks and Tautou to see who could give the most awkward delivery
of the word ‘sarcophagus’.[1]
Other than that, Rafael was distracted by Franke making audible
and/or bodily tics in response to every historical inaccuracy,
hyperbole, or flash-back dramatization, and Franke was distracted
by me nudging him in the ribs every time Audrey Tautou was
alluded to (whether by gross reverential euphemism or triangular
hand gesture) as The Living Embodiment of Pussy, and I was
distracted by Franke shushing me every time I whispered some
variant of “So when is Hanks going to kneel and sip
from her divine chalice” —
an exchange that occurred in regular ten minutes intervals
until the third act (and fourth act, and fifth act, and…)
when the frequency and bawdiness and shushing accelerated
into real-time play-by-play (e.g. “I’m so bored
why hasn’t the pussy-eating happened yet” “Yo
shut the fuck up” “THE GRAIL IS HER PUSSY FRANKE”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU FUCK”).
I never
read the book but I read the books it was based on[2]
during one of my more extended bouts of conspiratorial paranoia
several years ago, so the unveilings or whatever were more
tedious than mysterious — an experience apparently shared
by movie reviewers everywhere (see cumulative critic score
on Rottentomatoes); and since everybody in the Oprah-speaking
world has purchased if not read The Da Vinci Code,
the movie may be suffering from the most pandemic case of
Not as Good as the Book Syndrome since, well, The Greatest
Story Ever Told. That it’s self-serious and boring
and stupid probably doesn’t help either. Ian McKellen
does his best to provide a counterweight to Tom Hanks’
haircut, but Paul Bettany’s overwrought interpretation
of a crazed zealot albino made me nostalgic for Jake Busey’s
take on the same character in Contact, a movie just
as dumb and awkward but with more earnestness and mainstream
heart than Da Vinci’s tepid heresy.[3]
Plus Alfred Molina’s sour-faced bishop is a poor substitute
for Matthew McConaughey’s hunky “man of the cloth,
without the cloth” — just thinking about both
the character and line of dialogue is enough to make me forget
all about The Dull Vinci Code and head over to the
video store like right now.
________________________
[1]
Tautou won.
[2]
Dan Brown may have survived litigation but everybody knows
he swiped that Priory of Sion / Merovingian bloodline / Magdalen
womb = Holy Grail / Da Vinci = Templar Tool plot fodder from
books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent,
et al.
[3]
The Clinton-era lesson of Contact is that
‘Faith is at the heart of Science’, whereas The
Da Vinci Code’s post-millennial ‘Faith is
at the heart of Faith’ is more meta and nihilistic –
but both movies operate by equating Faith with Void.
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