Common Sense

I. Hate. The Da Vinci Code.

There, I said it. It is out in the open for all to read.

I probably wouldn’t hate the book so much if people realized that everything in it was purely fictional. Instead, most of the 40 million people who have read it (which only leads me to believe that there are at least 40 million people with really bad taste in books) take any historical references to be true.

Countless ‘Cracking the Da Vinci Code’ specials on TV have led me to this conclusion. Everyone who has read the book who gets interviewed for these programs invariably says “I wanted to see these places I read about in the book.” So much so that Da Vinci Code tours are available now in Europe.

It would be one thing if these people visited these places and learned their actual histories. Seldom is that the case. Instead, they learn all this crap about “rose lines” and a Priory of Scion that didn’t exist until the 1950s. They take a fictional book as literal history, which irks me to no end.

And now there is a movie.

Giving me some hope for the future of humanity, audiences at the Cannes Film Festival aren’t taking it seriously.

At Cannes, one scene during the film, meant to be serious, elicited prolonged laughter from the audience, and when the credits rolled, there was no applause, only a few catcalls and hisses. Things were no better Stateside, where the film screened for critics in New York.

The Hollywood Reporter headlined its review, ” ‘Da Vinci Code’ an unwieldy, bloated puzzle.”

“No chemistry exists between the hero and heroine, and motivation remains a troubling sore point,” wrote reviewer Kirk Honeycutt, panning Tom Hanks’ “remote, even wooden performance.” Only co-star Ian McKellen managed to avoid criticism.

What on earth is one of the greatest actors of our time, Sir Ian McKellen, doing in this film anyway? After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you’d imagine that he was swimming in money. He’s got to be bathing in gold coins by now. He doesn’t have to do this crap.

As an aside, one of my other favorite actors is Patrick Stewart, which might explain why I like the X-Men films so much. Even with a bizarre plot and no real story, they can make those films enjoyable.

Please, oh please, dear God, let this movie bomb horribly at the box office. Let this kill Tom Hanks’ and Dan Brown’s respective careers so that we may not have to suffer through another self-righteous piece-of-crap movie like Castaway  or another snore fest book like The Da Vinci Code. Amen.

If you will excuse me, I have to mail in Left Behind: World at War and The Legend of Zorro before watching Grandma’s Boy (It is a really weird part of my Netflix list. I had to say I at least saw them before I pronounced them total crap).

I. Hate. The Da Vinci Code.

There, I said it. It is out in the open for all to read.

I probably wouldn’t hate the book so much if people realized that everything in it was purely fictional. Instead, most of the 40 million people who have read it (which only leads me to believe that there are at least 40 million people with really bad taste in books) take any historical references to be true.

Countless ‘Cracking the Da Vinci Code’ specials on TV have led me to this conclusion. Everyone who has read the book who gets interviewed for these programs invariably says “I wanted to see these places I read about in the book.” So much so that Da Vinci Code tours are available now in Europe.

It would be one thing if these people visited these places and learned their actual histories. Seldom is that the case. Instead, they learn all this crap about “rose lines” and a Priory of Scion that didn’t exist until the 1950s. They take a fictional book as literal history, which irks me to no end.

And now there is a movie.

Giving me some hope for the future of humanity, audiences at the Cannes Film Festival aren’t taking it seriously.

At Cannes, one scene during the film, meant to be serious, elicited prolonged laughter from the audience, and when the credits rolled, there was no applause, only a few catcalls and hisses. Things were no better Stateside, where the film screened for critics in New York.

The Hollywood Reporter headlined its review, ” ‘Da Vinci Code’ an unwieldy, bloated puzzle.”

“No chemistry exists between the hero and heroine, and motivation remains a troubling sore point,” wrote reviewer Kirk Honeycutt, panning Tom Hanks’ “remote, even wooden performance.” Only co-star Ian McKellen managed to avoid criticism.

What on earth is one of the greatest actors of our time, Sir Ian McKellen, doing in this film anyway? After the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you’d imagine that he was swimming in money. He’s got to be bathing in gold coins by now. He doesn’t have to do this crap.

As an aside, one of my other favorite actors is Patrick Stewart, which might explain why I like the X-Men films so much. Even with a bizarre plot and no real story, they can make those films enjoyable.

Please, oh please, dear God, let this movie bomb horribly at the box office. Let this kill Tom Hanks’ and Dan Brown’s respective careers so that we may not have to suffer through another self-righteous piece-of-crap movie like Castaway  or another snore fest book like The Da Vinci Code. Amen.

If you will excuse me, I have to mail in Left Behind: World at War and The Legend of Zorro before watching Grandma’s Boy (It is a really weird part of my Netflix list. I had to say I at least saw them before I pronounced them total crap).