The Da Vinci Code: Critical Failure, Box Office Hit
I generally shun hype, trends, and fads. Maybe it’s my little way of rebelling against society. I have never seen even one episode of Survivor, 24, or Lost. I didn’t see Titanic until several years after it was released, when radio stations finally stopped playing that Celine Dion song eight times an hour. I don’t own an iPod, my gaming machine is an Atari 2600, and I don’t know or care who got voted off American Idol last night. If everybody’s doing it, there’s a good chance I’m not.
I spent a few years enduring all the hype surrounding Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code before finally breaking down and borrowing the book on tape from the library. I was facing a 24 hour drive from Dallas to Salt Lake City and I needed something to keep me awake thru the drive. I wasn’t impressed. Maybe it was the fact that I was listening rather than reading. I’m a sucker for a French accent when spoken by a woman. Heck, I’d enjoy a French woman reading the Novell Knowledgebase. But an American male voice faking a French accent is just plain annoying. Even worse is an American male voice imitating a female voice with a fake French accent. If the person reading this book to me were a woman, or were the story to take place in, say, Australia instead of France, I might have enjoyed it more.
Maybe. But then I’d still have to get past the numerous red herrings, false resolutions, and half-baked historical soliloquies. Not to mention the plot holes, the dryness of the lead character, and bizarre recurring imagery of a naked old guy. Then again maybe I just hated it because so many people liked it.
The book has been the talk of the world since publication. Which means the movie was inevitable. For almost a year it seems like we’ve been hearing about this film and all the controversy it has generated- from the anti-“Code” documentaries to Vatican denunciation to Tom Hanks’ goofy hairdo. But when Ron Howard’s film interpretation of this “thriller” premiered in Cannes last week, it was skewered by critics as bland, bloated, over-hyped, and way too long.
But critical failures do not always translate into box office flops, as evidenced by Da Vinci’s $77 million box office opening. Lines for the movie strung up and down the halls of the theater I attended Saturday night. Luckily we were there to see Dreamworks’ Over the Hedge, which turned out to be a great little film. I suppose it’s not fair to knock a movie I’ve not yet seen. To their credit, Ron Howard generally makes good movies and Tom Hanks is generally a great actor. The filmography I’m sure is amazing, and the footage filmed inside the Louvre is surely stunning. All pluses.
Will I eventually see The Da Vinci Code? Sure. Probably in about 6 months when I rent it from McDonalds Redbox with a free promo code. I’ll let you know what I think.
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I, on the other hand, read the prequel “Angels and Demons” prior to reading “The Da Vinci Code” and thought that the latter wasn’t even near as good as “Angels and Demons”. I was glad that I had read “Angels and Demons” first because I felt like I knew Robert Langdon (the lead character) a heck of a lot better than what “The Da Vinci Code” revealed about him.
Of course, that makes sence if “The Davinci Code” is a sequel; you’d expect the first book in a series to focus more on character development than the second book. But, interestingly enough, very few people that I talk to about the book even know that “The Davinci Code ” is a sequel to “Angels & Demons”. But almost everyone (dare I say EVERYONE) that I’ve talked to that has read both books thinks that “Angels and Demons” is the better book.
So I don’t doubt that you have the opinion you do, D. Sirmize. Reading might have helped a little (as opposed to listening), especially given your dislike for male voices faking French, women voices. I felt similar about a book-on-tape that Heather and I listened to recently by Orson Scott Card called “Shadow of the Hegemon”.
The book was great; Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite authors. But it would have been better to read due to the various voices. There were three different readers. There was a female voice for the chapters that dealt mostly with Petra’s view of things, and that’s the one voice that I didn’t mind. The other two voices (both male) would get on my nerves at times. One voice was a DEEP voice that was only used to read the email correspondence that started out each chapter of the book. I would cringe when the voice read the email addresses. Imagine having someone read this page to you in a voice so deep that you can barely understand it. (Whales might not have a hard time with his voice, but I always missed vital information revealed in the opening chapters because I couldn’t understand a thing.)
As for the other male voice, it was only annoying when he read the part of a female character. Sometimes I wonder how well I’m pulling off my female voices as I read “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” to my kids. Sometimes mid-sentence I’ll catch myself sounding exactly like the voices that annoyed me in “Shadow of the Hegemon”. But Sami hasn’t complained, so I’ll just keep on sounding stupid until the day that Sami says, “Daddy? Can you stop reading the girl voices like that?”
As for the movie, I’ll be seeing it as soon as we can find a babysitter to watch the kids. Sounds like D. Sirmize is the perfect candidate.
Comment by Tyler — May 22, 2006 @ 2:56 pm
“If everybody’s doing it, there’s a good chance I’m not.”
I feel sorry for your wife, D. Sirmize.
When many people do the same thing, it plays a vital part of the human social structure. It’s what we talk about to socialize and get to know each other better. We find out each other opinions on useless mindless stuff, and this somehow teaches us how to get along better. I would wager that if we started a Middle East version of American Idol many of our problems over there would go away.
My advice: loosen up a little, take a ride on the wild side, heck watch a few episodes of America Idol, it may give you a little water cooler ammo and increase your chance for promotion.
Or not.
It’s all good.
Comment by Idol Fan — May 24, 2006 @ 8:40 am
I saw the movie tonight. I found it entertaining. Heather liked it, too. I always wonder how I would have viewed the movie had I not read the book. I know for sure that I wouldn’t be knowing what was going to happen next and I think if I didn’t know it might be more exhilerating. But it was still good and my knowledge from the book helped me explain a couple of things to Heather after the movie.
Comment by Tyler — May 26, 2006 @ 10:53 pm