Director: Ron Howard
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 1.0
Literal adaptation of the populist novel by Dan Brown - which so many people claim to be their "favorite novel" mostly I believe because everyone by now knows the plot and because most people don't read that much any more - about a modern day search for the Holy Grail. Tom Hanks seems miscast (though along for the ride, as it were), Audrey Tautou doesn't work well in English and Paul Bettany's character is like a parody of Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty in Blade Runner - as for the plotting, well, there's a lot of exposition, and the cops always seem to be arriving just in time with Our Heroes managing to sneak away Just In Time. One benefit to the Brown book is that it actually angered the Horribly Corrupt Catholic Church, which I admit gets a chuckle out of me, but one deficit is that its popularity prevented me a few months ago from getting a ticket to see The Last Supper in Milan, what with everyone and his Uncle clamoring to examine all those bunk 'secrets' in the work of art. Kudos to the Westminster Abbey people calling this 'theologically unsound' - no kidding, it's a novel by a dime store writer, not Saul Bellow - and if anybody I know actually believes in any of this prattle, do yourself a favor and never, ever bring those theories to my attention.
