(I Did Not Watch) The Da Vinci Code
I did not really care about the hype, nor did I heed my church's admonition regarding the 'The Da Vinci Code'. All I knew is that the book was a one-and-a-half day page-turner and by that merit, I thought it would be interesting to watch the movie to compare. But then I, being quite impressionable on things I read and am only occasionally stubborn, this time decided to mind not the pastors' words but the critics' reviews so I am staying away from the Da Vinci movie, to spare myself some 2 hours and 29 minutes of regret.
An R-18 and a big boycott by certain mall theatres here in the Philippines did not seem to dampen the movie's box-office appeal, but caused to enhance it even more, although I have a mind to think that all these people who lined up did not read the real lowdown in Rotten Tomatoes and other reviews elsewhere, so consequently were not given a timely dose of intervention. Myself, I am doing Tom Hanks a great big favor by not watching this superhyped drama where people say he was majorly miscast, acted like a zombie, and ultimately courted disaster (I mean, it could have been someone like Gary Oldman, even Nicolas Cage instead). At least he need not raise his annoyance factor any further with me as it is already enough as it is. As for Audrey Tautou who did nothing wrong being Amelie, maybe I'll see her in the next movie and will be doing her great service as I do Tom Hanks by skipping this one.
Actually, the real spectacle coming out of all this is to witness something with everything given on it fail for all the world to see. I don't know, but there's always a tiny dose of perverse thrill that arises out of mere mortals whenever such things happen, because then, failure becomes all encompassing, begins to make sense, and becomes this universal thing, instead of just something very specific and personally aimed at you. 'The Da Vinci Code' movie may disappoint the moviegoers who read some 50 million copies of the book yet make megabucks at the tills (specially from those who have 'religion rage' and don't want to be told what and what not to watch), but the blockbuster spectacle of a movie that's "... not very good -- long and mostly inert." that fails to measure up must be a humbling downer for superstar monumental egos and in that sense, it still fails.
To its disadvantage, a very high expectation was pegged on the movie to equal the resounding success of the book. Undoubtedly, the best names in the industry were put together to live up to the expectation. They may have done their best to translate the complicated interweaving of the novel between 'fact' and fiction into film, or so they thought. Seemingly everything humanly possible was done to ensure the movie's success, so whatever happened to the end result can only be one of two things: either Tom's hair hexed it, or God intervened. And if anything, it may earn the distinction of being the most disappointing movie that made the most money in history. At least.
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