StumpTown Entertainment

This was a certifiably awful movie, but let me start with a couple disclaimers. First, I didn’t read the book. I hear that the book tells a fascinating and gripping story in spite of some pretty pedestrian writing. Let me tell you pedestrian writing would have been a breath of fresh air for the movie.

Second, the controversies surrounding this movie completely escape me. Before I get into these, and because of my own sensitivity to spoilers, I must confess, that this discussion gives away some of what the movie is about. That said, if you don’t already know this much about the story, you have likely be living under a rock and are not likely to even own a computer with internet access that would allow you to read this very out of the way blog. Nevertheless if the moss from that rock is still fresh on your shirt and you hate spoilers as much as I do, read the book and then skip the movie and read this review later.

The first mysterious controversy is external to the movie. That is, the Catholic church and many others in Christendom calling for boycotting this movie because it does not accurately depict what is told in scripture, how the Catholic church conducts itself and many other things related to the Christian faith. Uhmmmm….right…it is a work of fiction!!!! No one is claiming otherwise. Neither Dan Brown, the author nor Ron Howard, the movie’s director make any claim whatsoever that anything presented in this book or movie is real or true or should be believed and accepted. Why aren’t the Paris police outraged at how they are portrayed? Why isn’t Harvard coming forward to demand an apology for suggesting that they have a symbols expert who went looking for the holy grail? Why? Because neither the book nor the movie ever claimed to be anything but fiction and everyone except for a select few Christians get that. The mere fact that it references actual people, places and events and then distorts how those things really happened is no reason to be any more upset about this movie than we should be about Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure or Woody Allen’s masterpiece Love and Death.

In my mind, well-meaning church-going folk often get upset over completely the wrong things when it comes to pop culture addressing religion. They raise a huge fuss over an innocuous murder-mystery novel that presents an in your face, easy to identify message about Christianity that you can easily note and choose to reject or accept. And yet a show like “touched by an angel” can turn Biblical theology on its head, but because it seems to have a good moral and because Laura Ingles Wilder’s Pa was on the show, it got a pass from the religious critics. This is backwards.

This movie is no more likely to cause someone to have a crisis of faith than is the National Enquirer making a claim that someone saw the return of Jesus foretold in the markings of their peach pit. Remember, please, this book/movie is pure fiction and never claims to be anything else. If you need further proof consider that they misquoted the “Gospel according to Mary.” If you have to misquote some piece of Gnostic propaganda like that “gospel” to make a point theologically, chances are you aren’t trying to produce a scholarly work.

I also didn’t get the controversy of the story itself. Without getting into a whole philosophical and theological discourse here, why would the discovery that Jesus was married be such a big deal? It would raise some questions about why the Bible makes no mention of it and it would certainly call into question (as common sense and Biblical teaching already do) the Catholic doctrine of celibacy for its clergy, but other than that, what’s the big deal? I believe Jesus was fully man and fully God. Why would His being married make Him less God? I just never bought that this was a big enough deal to kill and go to war over. If an authentic ancient text was discovered tomorrow proving conclusively that Jesus was married, it would not change my perception of Jesus even the slightest bit. It might rattle my notion of scripture a bit, but even that wouldn’t be catastrophic. I just don’t get it. And because I didn’t get it, I couldn’t engage in the drama of the movie.

What it’s about: Tom Hanks plays a symbols expert with a mullet and a mission. He is called in to help in the investigation of a murder and finds himself on a treasure hunt through ancient works of art and history to find the “holy grail” which might just prove that Jesus was married, a fact that would apparently put an end to Christianity and a secret that men who had spent their lives devoted to God would gladly become mass murderers to protect.

What’s to like: The cast. Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellan, Jean Reno, and Alfred Molina are all some of the very best in the business. All fine actors and thoroughly enjoyable to watch. All completely wasted in this movie.

What I could discern of the plot line is really a pretty fascinating concept, so there’s that.

Audrey Tautou is really striking and likeable.

My wife also mentioned that she liked the effects used to show us how Hanks’ character was seeing the different codes in his mind which I agree was pretty cool.

By far my favorite thing about this movie is that I was watching it with my wife in the theater in seats where the arm rests can fold up and I could sit closer to my lovely wife. If ever your seat is the best thing about a movie, that movie is in serious trouble.

What I could have done without: Where to begin…. The writing was astonishingly bad. The dialogue between Hanks and Tautou was so painful at times it was almost unintentionally comical. In one scene, Hanks bursts out with demand that she tell him about her past. The scene is so random and out of the blue and so forced and unbelievable, it prompted me to lean over and ask Tanya, “if you’re Tom Hanks and your last 29 movies were huge hits, why would you agree to do a scene like that? Can’t you say, ‘I’m supposed to say what? C’mon guys, I’m Tom freakin Hanks. The writers from Forrest Gump could fall into a coma and write better stuff than this.’ Doesn’t being Tom Hanks mean anything?”

This movie really played like the writer became overwhelmed with all the history stuff from the book that they had to cram in to make the story make any sense at all. The solution was long scenes of an albino whipping himself and then unending, brutal, brutal scenes of Tom Hanks and Ian McKellan talking about historical events. I’m not sure what was worse. The fact that there were poorly staged action scenes that did nothing to progress the story or add to the tension or drama. Or the fact that the writer gave up on trying to show a story and decided to just let a couple characters monologue the story to death.

As I said, a brilliant cast was totally wasted.

Several scenes made absolutely no sense for someone who has not read the book and we were provided no explanation.

If McKellan’s character already knew the whole story, how does it qualify as such a big secret?

Every aspect of movie making, from the camera angles, to the writing to Tom Hanks total lack of personality, to the editing looked like something an accountant would direct after one year of film school. It was the least creative offering for a high profile movie in a long long time.

Who do you like: Audrey Tautou. She’s a keeper. The characters were fairly sympathetic except that the movie so oversimplified things that we saw none of these allegedly Godly men at all conflicted with what they were doing. This rang very false and put a real distance between these one dimensional characters and us the viewing public.

What’s new: Tom Hanks made a really bad movie. That’s about it. Completely uninspired movie making.

What’s the last word: Ending was predictable, but fine. That movie couldn’t have withstood a real plot twist, it would have just left everyone confused as nothing would have been done to set it up correctly.

Who you should bring: People you don’t like. Friends don’t bring friends to see this movie.

Where you should watch: On your couch when you are staying home sick 5 years from now when it is playing on TNT and you can watch it as you drift in and out of your Nyquil coma.

What’s the couch rating: We saw this one in the theater, but Tanya would have been out in 20 minutes on the couch for this one and if she had for some reason stayed awake, she would have been furious at herself for wasting time she could have been sleeping.

What my gut tells me: I walked out thinking, how does that cast and that director take such a promising story and create that steaming pile of excrement on film?

What it’s like: National Treasure. Also total rubbish with a very similar story. Da Vinci code took itself more seriously, but otherwise, these movies are pretty similar.

Where it rates: 4 It only gets this high because the underlying story they couldn’t figure out how to tell was interesting and very promising. It could have been a good movie.

It wasn’t.