Oh How Lame, the Hair of Tom!

So by now, most of us have seen either all of, or part of the disaster that was The Da Vinci Code. Personally, I actually paid money to go and see the movie the night it came out. Why? Well my friends, it may be hard to believe, but there was a time when the movie guru you see before you was young and naive and didn't know all that she knows today about what movies are good, and what movies are a complete waste of time.

But getting back on track, after the movie, many fans were left asking 'what the hell went wrong?' and personally, I don't know the answer to that question. I'd like to say that I really do know all there is to know about movies, but I'm just a mortal, and I can only come up with a few suggestions on to why Code completely and utterly crashed and burned.

First of all, it remained way too true to the book. It's not always the case that books can be perfectly segwayed into movies (AHEM Watchmen AHEM) and this is one of those times. I think that the best example of this is at the very start of the film, when Langdon aka Tom Hanks is deciphering the codes that Dead French Dude left behind for him. Does anyone else remember this? Floating, glowing letters, and a murmuring Hanks does not a good scene make. The effects here looked like some kid with Final Cut Pro had spent about 2 minutes trying to make his Com

m Tech project YouTube acceptable. I mean really, how much of a budget did these guys have, and that's the best they could come up with? Honestly Ron Howard, give your head a shake.

SECONDLY! Ron Howard isn't an action director. Sure, he's made such great films as Apollo 13, Frost Nixon, Cocoon, etc etc. But as for action and face paced adventure? Not so much. The audience doesn't experience a sense of urgency like they do in Demons. There is no ultimate threat really, except for that really pale monk, who looks like he could be my cousin, and even then, he doesn't seem like that much of a threat.

Also, as for the action part, a specific scene comes to mind where Sophie is driving her smart car around the streets of Paris, and the cops are after her. In a nutshell, the scene is shot too close. You can't tell what's going on, because everything is shot so close up. You see perhaps 2 shots that show more than just Sophie looked scared and/or concentrated and/or excited.

Lastly, Tom Hanks' hair. Need I say more?

There are a few other things that are wrong with the film (aka the flashbacks. If it was a happy flashback, it was colored normally, but if if was a scary or sad flashback, some guy in editing when nuts with the color correction and made it all BLUE), but I won't get into those too much. Pretty much, only the really die hard fans enjoyed the movie, and even then, only slightly. It's a rental of a movie at best, and even then I wouldn't suggest it to anyone.