May 18, 2006

The Da Vinci Code
Hippo dorks bravely fight back against the film/book that is one Sudoku puzzle and an Oprah special away from global domination
By Glenn Given production@hippopress.com & Dan?Szczesny dszczesny@hippopress.com

The second best selling work of fiction (coincidentally inspired by the first best selling work of fiction) won?t fail on screen because of its infantile source material; Tom Hanks will. Yes fail it shall, despite the presence of a secret Vatican albino ninja (played by a powdered be-wigged Geoffrey Chaucer from A Knight?s Tale: He Will Rock You), Magneto, Dr. Octopus gone all a-Jesus and a double dose of Franco-sense via Audrey ?Amelie? Tautou and Jean ?Leon: The Professional? Reno. None of these awesomely kitschy, indie, geeky, fetishy pulpy treats can stop the barely restrained mullet of Tom Hanks from blowing this movie like a seal on Apollo 13.

As Hanks Cap?n-Crunch-decoder-rings his way though this poor man?s Clive Cussler novel, its ?incredible secrets ... that shake the foundations of faith? will be emoted in the exact manner that Hanks has treated:

(a) The triumph of the human spirit as found in: outer space/a deserted island/the life of a simple boy
(b) True love as found: between a man and Meg Ryan/a foreigner and Catharine Zeta-Jones/toys and their owner/a mobster and his son
(c) The magic of faith as found on: death row/a train to the North Pole.

As has been the case since Hanks? last truly great performance (1990s Joe Versus the Volcano) Tom will ?Hollywood-everyman on mission? with a bland stew of Staring Intensely?, Gazing in Awe?, Beholding Woe?, Regarding with World-Weariness? and akwardly punching. He is too human to be human and consequently any part that requires a stretch of the credulity ? say, to believe that a Harvard professor of religious who-ha, half reluctantly, whirlwinds the globe uncovering cult messages and saving French girls ? becomes too grounded by Hanks? approachability; his anti-glamour undoes him. His perfect banality casts too stark a contrast to the Carmen Sandiego shenanigans that swirl about him. He doesn?t bring a story to earth with him, he reminds us just how gob-smackingly asinine the plot is.

Hanks was at his best wearing fake boobs and pulling sitcom capers. While there were some stinkers in his early career ? the chokingly schmaltzy Big for one ? for the most part it was boozing up donkeys and fighting with Shelly Long; good times.

It?s this humanity-laid-bare crap that gets me, Hanks. And Ron Howard, you?re not helping much either. If I wanted to experience the meaning of brotherhood or faith I?d volunteer at a soup kitchen, but hey, you don?t see me rushing out to do that do you. No and likewise, I?m not gonna plunk down to see Hanks bring his bazooka of noble humanism to bear on use as we learn that The Holy Grail is a metaphor for Mary Magdalene, who was married to Jesus and had his baby, proof of which is buried under the Louvre.

Please Tom, call Abe Vigoda and start working on Joe Versus. the Volcano 2 before your majestic human spirit drives me to care about my fellow man.
? Glenn Given

Dan responds
Yeah but...er...Tom Hanks is...his everyman style can....argh, I can?t say it! I can?t defend Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks is exactly the wrong actor for the job and Ron Howard is exactly the wrong director. Any hope the movie had of rising out of the flavorless chicken broth that is the book, depended on a lead and director that could lift the material beyond its flimsy premise. How about Scorsese and, oh I don?t know, Ed Norton. There?s a movie I?d see, if for no other reason than to see how the big boys do it.

Though I suppose with all the ?controversy? swirling around this book, it?s more appropriate to have Forest Gump and Opie on board.

If there are any people on the planet who have not read Dan Brown?s The Da Vinci Code, please, please stay that way. I respect you and am jealous of the fact that you must have been in a blissfully ignorant coma the last two years. If you are one of these people, welcome to 2006. Let me get you up to speed: yes, George Bush was reelected, The Red Sox won a World Series, and most amazing of all, Brown?s book has been on the best seller list for, um, ever, and next week it will be a movie.

Like last decade?s mega-blockbuster-phenomenon-runaway best seller, The Bridges of Madison County, Brown?s book has inspired an unprecedented cultural revolution of copycat books, religious condemnation and general water cooler talk. And like James Waller?s book, The Da Vinci Code is, at best, a toss-off amateurish potboiler. And what does that spell for the movie my Sudoko-solving Da Vinci Code sleuths? Will the movie aspire to the heights of mediocrity and aggressively poor clich?s that the book fulfills? You bet it will.

Look, I harbor no ill will toward Dan Brown. He?s one of us. He can?t be blamed if every religious wacko wants to rail against his NOVEL. (It?s fiction people. It?s fiction!) Heck, censorship is good for sales. I don?t even blame him for attaching the claim at the front of the book that ?All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.? They are not of course, but so what. Maybe the claim that everything is real is actually fiction as well. Ha, ha, puzzle that one out, Sherlock. I can?t even blame him for the movie, which will no doubt be so bland that we?ll forget about it faster than you can say ?Mary Magdeline is the Holy Grail.?

No, I blame Brown for not trying; for taking advantage of lazy readers who have stopped expecting actual brain work from their literature, and have come to associate controversy and titillation with high art. And I blame him for sentences like, ?Sophie sensed a rising air of academic anticipation now in both of her male companions? and ?A chill raked her flesh.? Pop art and escapist literature or movies do not have to be dumbed down. Brown, himself an academic, is not a first-time novelist. He should know better. The billion people reading his novel should know better. And the hordes who will go to the movie should know better as well.

? Dan?Szczesny

Glenn responds
I whole-heartedly concur. Dan Brown?s prose is littered with akward metaphor non-sense adjective application and pointless crypto-babble. Like a bad episode of Star Trek the key to the various codes and cyphers lies in gobbledeegook ?theory? and the divine insights of his one-dimensional protagonists. The idea that Da Vinci would write a book of my grandma?s word search puzzles in his paintings is a half-brained concept better served in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Adventures. This Illuminati fan-fic is bloated with clich? and hackery from his brainy but just-masculine-enough-to-keep-the-red-staters-happy hero to the cadre of disposable supporting characters that serve only to present the various ridiculous brain teasers and fade away. And the lurve! Oh mammy! What bad novel doesn?t include an akwardly concieved romance between two people from different viewpoints. What a surprise, two cardboard cutouts see past their intellectual differences and come to madly, passionately love each other in a maturely physical yet trauma-induced emotional manner. And she?s French! Of course Franco-women love has been the rage since Better Off Dead! If Brown weren?t so dead serious about this hokum it would make the sharpest of satire of modern American-Lit?s fixation on vomiting forth faux-intellectualized pulp heroics. Every nickel-and-dime writer is pumping out stories about fightin? professors and their monumental struggle against fools in power (whom they show up), thugs (whom they are captured by and subsequently escape from by virtue of Prof. Amazing?s clever Heckle & Jeckle-ish legerdemain), spring-loaded poison dart traps and the corrupt or evil establishments of secret societies.

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