If you've been scratching your head and thinking "what the F" has happened to WTF, scratch no more. Let's just say that in the inevitable letdown after Oscar season (this year with the minor surprise of CRASH outpacing BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN for Best Picture), WTF felt the need to go on hiatus to retrench, refresh, and rehydrate. Okay, so we had a few drinks and waved at Sandy Bullock and Keanu outside the VANITY FAIR party at Morton's. At least WTF was NOT caught asking Jon Voight for his autograph, and it's not like we were recognized or standing on a ladder.
At any rate, between that post-Oscar moment and a nascent Netflix addiction, a brief stint in reviewers' rehab seemed in order.
And so, fresh for the Summer Movie Season (oh, yes, it so DOES deserve those commanding capitals), WTF has returned, ready to tell you what she thinks, whether it's movies seen at the unimaginative new Century City AMC 15, the always crowded Grove, or the arty Arclight; stuff seen on TV after a fresh delivery into ye olde mailbox by the gnomes of Netflix; or just your basic TV fare. In fact, WTF finds she can no longer contain herself to movies, and so you may hear her opinion about TV, a play, or really rarely a freaking book. So fasten your seat belts, we're back.
And what better way to start than with the most anticipated Catholic-bashing movie of the season, THE DA VINCI CODE. Please keep reading, but I'm showing my hand right here: it was bad. Like, long, dull, boring, dopey bad. Did I mention the Catholic bashing? In case you've been on your own hiatus from popular culture for the past 4 years, the set up involves a dramatic murder in the Louvre (Yay! Paris! And many scenes in the real Louvre), an American professor (Tom Hanks), a French detective (Audrey Tatou) who is the granddaughter of the murdered man (oh, and so much more), a bunch of silly clues (the origin of which I'm still not sure -- did the dead grandpa make them up, or did Da Vinci?), a self-flagellating albino who murders at the bidding of a mysterious cabal of Catholic clerics (you see?), a crazy old English eccentric, and a completely nonsuspenseful chase across France to London and Scotland. The clues point to the location and nature of the Holy Grail, and believe me, about half way through this you will just be WISHING on a star or a cross or a bishop's mitre that you were watching MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, which had the good sense to be FUNNY about the whole thing. I've never seen so many characters seem so utterly blasé about the predicaments they're put in: that murdering albino is pretty scary, but he seems to scare himself more than anyone else in the movie (what with the flagellation and the barbed wire garter, it's understandable).
At the big reveal [spoiler alert, unless you read NEWSWEEK or the milion other articles that recently have been published], the putative descendant of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene looked more disappointed that thrilled, like what she needed was a big pin saying, "I'm the direct descendant of JC and all I got was this lousy cardigan." Onto Tom Hanks. I'm sure he's a lovely man, but he can't sell brilliant -- the American professor is supposed to be this brainy symbologist (which is what, exactly?) who can decipher ancient texts for their real, deeper meaning (like a much less hunky version of STARGATE SG-1's Daniel Jackson), but Tom seemed to have all his "cryptoanalysis" memorized or written on the back of his hand. There was just no way he could make you believe anything was going on inside his head. It's such a rare skill for an actor to be able to portray thought (Glenn Close did it at the end of DANGEROUS LIASIONS; Cate Blanchett and Russell Crowe can do it, too). Here Tom and Audrey put less thought into deciphering the secret code left by the Priory of Sion than the average contestant on WHEEL OF FORTUNE puts into the lightning round.
The popular book, which was interesting if misleading and badly written, at least went by quickly, though any alert reader would recognize that it basically read like a cheesy movie bogged down by endless exposition. And guess what? Now it IS a cheesy movie bogged down by endless exposition.
Unfortunately, the DVC is part of a new trend of pseudo-historical entertainment (see also KING ARTHUR, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, ALEXANDER, and TROY) that tempt readers and viewers to think they know more than they do. Religiously and historically, the movie is as big a howler as the upcoming THE OMEN (6/6/06 -- be there!) and previous EXORCIST extravaganzas. The book at least put the story's anti-Catholic message into some context; here, it's just thrown at you like fact. And though in the movie they keep saying that if the whole Mary Magdalene rigamarole is true, it means the end of Western Civilization (and Jesus' divinity), I'd like to think Western Civ, which has survived 2 millenia of the mangled essays of college freshman, not to mention good old Jesus, could survive the DUH Vinci Code.