Desultory Thoughts

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.