what may or may not be hard reality

So, first off, I suppose it should be mentioned that I haven't read the book. I tried to, about a year ago or so, and got 59 pages into it before I simply couldn't bear it any longer. I felt patronized and insulted, didn't much like the style of writing, and does Dan Brown assume his entire audience is comprised of idiots? However, people who had read it told me that it might make a good mystery film. So M&G and I went to see it, all of us, for various reasons, with extremely low expectations.

It didn't start out terribly well. That line about how Fache worked for 'a kind of French FBI' left both me and G seething. In retrospect it would probably have been more beneficial to the movie viewing had we interpreted it as M did; Fache mocking the American Langdon by assuming he would have no idea what the hell he was talking about otherwise. However, G and I both took it as a personal insult from the screenwriter(s?), assuming that the audience would be stupid enough not to understand. (Which is exactly the problem I had with the book.)

So some 10 minutes into the movie it quickly hit rock bottom at some -15 out of 0-10.

After that, though, it got better. It took a while for it to dig itself out of its own hole, but I can't remember any other such blatant moments of feeling that someone, somewhere, obviously thought I was a moron.

One thing that I wasn't expecting, and that I was a bit put off by, was the speed. Having not read the book, but heard many many people talk about it I had this image of some guy puttering around the Louvre, looking at cryptic symbols and messages, going back to his hotel room, and sort of in all comfortable slowness on scraps of paper and by talking to some people, working out what the hell it all meant. The fact that it's a bloody action piece, and it's all done under tremendous time pressure while being chased by insane killers and large cars is something that people don't see fit to mention at all when talking about the book. And of course, being a person who isn't overly fond of excess excitement, be they in movies or books, it wasn't exactly a pleasant surprise.

Love Ian McKellen, no surprise there. And rather liked his missive as well. Maybe not the smartest way to go about it, but the end of persecution is a pretty neat thing, no? Was pleasantly amused by his ridiculous questions at the gate, and then the whole is-he-or-isn't-he? thing kept me on my toes for a bit. Gandalf is da Man. And there was some nice slashy stuff with his butler, too. Until he killed him... (Only thing, I kept being disappointed the butler wasn't played by Jude Law. I mean, he totally looked like him, and then the camera would get closer and I'd realize it wasn't actually Jude Law. Nothing wrong with the actor they had, but there was this automatic assumption I made every time he had a scene, and then it'd turn out to be wrong, which was just generally annoying.)

What's all this talk about the bad and stereotypical portrayal of women? I mean, granted, Audrey Tautou wasn't the strongest and most inspirational of women characters on film, but I couldn't see how it was any worse than any general action/thriller/mystery movie with a male hero. He didn't even get her at the end.

I did think, however, that it's relatively easy to make a case for movie-Langdon being gay. I was told of how the book ended with him and Audrey making love under the stars, or something else equally gross, and I was so, so grateful that he only kissed her forehead when he left. However, the utter reluctance with which he eyed her, and her rather more obvious lust for him to kiss her, made me wonder if they wanted us to read anything more into that.

There was some stuff that verged on cheesy, some montages that I'd rather not have had, but the music mostly made up for that. I really liked the music. Almost so that I'd consider buying the soundtrack.

Audrey Tautou is pretty, and all. Still, I prefer Juliette Binoche.

In conclusion; a decent enough action/thriller flick, with a high entertainment value, well made, with good music, good actors, good filming, and so on. Nothing spectacular. I'd watch it again, if I had a friend who hadn't seen it, or was a part of a group where the majority wanted to see it. Wouldn't watch it again for my own sake. Definitely won't read the book.