Well, the first reviews of movie “The Da Vinci Code” are in, and they aren’t encouraging. One of today’s best comes from TimeOut London. It’s good, because reviewer Dave Calhoun is perhaps harder on the book than the movie.
The Da Vinci Code is a dreadful novel. I would be ashamed as a writer to have something so bad be so popular. And I say that with no gripes about a married Jesus, as presented by author Dan Brown.
My complaints are more fundamental: Senseless history, ridiculous conspiracies, and bad storytelling. The plot’s meanderings are pretty easy to see coming. I would love to be paid half as much for good storytelling as I assume the author made off the book and movie rights.
Dave isn’t as kind as I. He writes, “Only an idiot would swallow any of Brown’s hysterical, magpie approach to history. This is historical fiction that fully indulges our appetite for conspiracy and willingness to feel disempowered at the hands of the past”. Oh my: “If ever there was a movie marriage made in hell it was that between novelist Dan Brown and film director Ron Howard. Brown’s clunky, awkward prose is well matched to Howard’s frighteningly earnest, spoon-feeding approach to cinema”.