Great Da Vinci Review

I mean the review is great, not that it says the film is great.

Really, the review had me when it called the whole story "retarded." He didn't have to go on to say:

The madcap race from clue to clue would be fun if the clues and puzzles were interesting, but they seem to be on about the level of the puzzles and riddles that appear in the Magic Ink books your parents would give to you on long car trips.

I'm going to read this book tonight, then see the movie. I love bad books and bad movies. Some movies -- The Avengers, Batman & Robin, First Knight -- achieve a level of incompetence so perfect the films become true camp, which is to say, unintentional camp (as opposed to deliberate camp, as in Mars Attacks, which is just stupid and boring).

It seems like Akiva Goldman, Tom Hanks, and Ron Howard have created a delightful bon-bon of horrifically inept here.

I must see it.

But first I must read it. I'm told it will take me three hours.

Ohhh, This Sounds Good: At Hubs & Spokes:

Several whistles instead of applause were all that greeted the end of Ron Howard's 125-million-dollar film, and worse than that, the 2,000-strong audience even burst out laughing at the movie's key moment.

A lot of reviewers are pointing out the extreme mismatch between what the movie really is -- an absurdly lurid pulpy potboiler -- and what the movie imagines itself to be -- an imporant and high-minded exegis on man's search for knowledge, or something gay like that.

Anyone see Saharra? It was a dopey romp based on Clive Cussler's sub-Tom-Clancy-level adventure books, but the movie knew that. And so what it delivered was some surprisingly good jackass fun. (Although, really, I could have done without the enormous solar-energy death machine at the end.)

This movie seems ponderously self-important, a bit of stupidity mistaken, Chauncey Gardner like, for cleverness and wisdom.

It sounds amazing.

posted by Ace at 02:05 PM

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