Da Vinci Code

The film has been the talk of the summer - much of it around Tom Hanks' flowing locks of hair and the critics' near universal dislike of Ron Howard's film adaptation of the Dan Brown novel, but the Da Vinci Code continues to pull in viewers, raking in $70+ million in box office its opening weekend, and trailing only the dominant X-Men 3 in its second weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.

My wife and I pulled into one of the later showings tonight, starting the film at 10:15, and despite arriving 10 minutes early, we found the theater packed. In fact, the only row that had two adjacent seats was the very front row, where we found ourselves facing a huge screen that had us craning left and right to see the action ahead, or racing to read the subtitles as they came on screen, when if sat further back we could have grasped them immediately.

Having managed to avoid reading the novel myself, I came in to the film without deep-set expectations or mental comparisons of how the film would perform versus the novel on which it was based. For my wife that was not the case, and after a series of "That's not how it was in the book!", I made it clear I didn't care, and was trying to enjoy the film for what it was - an attempt to cram a novel's worth of detail, symbols and history into 2 and a half hours of less detailed fare. While the plot line itself was interesting and loosely based on historical fact and religious history, it wasn't any kind of thriller that one would go to time and again or widely recommend. It didn't have any scenes that grabbed you for fear, drama, romance or comedy. Instead it pushed forward from clue to clue and limited character development, focusing on only 4 or 5 main actors without delving too far into their background, with snippets only offering yet more clues to how they got there.

As for the movie's main premises, it's not my place to say how right or how wrong they are. The best part of religion in general is having some things make absolute logical sense, and much more unknown, where faith in the unseen bridges the gap. No amount of debate or research can wholly serve that purpose, as more knowledge often leads to more questions.

Listening to ''Assorted Trance Volume 15'', by DJ Irish (Play Count: 3)