The Da Vinci Code.

Gotta grudgingly admit it's an event, but I think we'll be glad to have reviews and stories funneled off from the Daily's usual fare and dumped here over the next few days.

Variety's Todd McCarthy: "A pulpy page-turner in its original incarnation as a huge international bestseller has become a stodgy, grim thing in the exceedingly literal-minded film version of The Da Vinci Code."

Mike Goodridge in Screen Daily: "The problem is that the preposterous particulars of [Dan] Brown's one-night chase across French and English monuments become markedly silly when depicted with such sombre portentousness as [Ron] Howard adopts here."

Kirk Honeycutt in the Hollywood Reporter: "The movie really only catches fire after an hour, when Ian McKellen hobbles on the scene as the story's Sphinx-like Sir Leigh Teabing. Here is the one actor having fun with his role and playing a character rather than a piece to a puzzle."

Jeffrey Wells: "[I]t's a fairly flat sit."

R Kinsey Lowe rounds up a few more initial reactions in the Los Angeles Times. More from Reuters and the AP.

In the New York Times, Sharon Waxman addresses the question Kim Masters raised the other day in Slate: Why didn't Sony show it to anyone before its premiere? Again, related: Peter J Boyer in the New Yorker.

Online browsing tip. The Guardian's got a gallery with fat captions.

Updates: Anne Thompson: "[T]he movie errs on the side of caution in every way.... It's as if the film's religious content drove the fun out of the movie."

The Telegraph's David Gritten: "Well, it's handsome-looking, professional, with the highest production values Hollywood megabucks can buy. But mistakenly, it tries to be tasteful and takes itself all too seriously."

AO Scott in the New York Times: "[O]nce it gets going, Mr Howard's movie has its pleasures. He and [Akiva] Goldsman have deftly rearranged some elements of the plot (I'm going to be careful here not to spoil anything), unkinking a few over-elaborate twists and introducing others that keep the action moving along."

Eugene Hernandez: "Bored, and surprised by just how mediocre the film is, I maintained occasional interest as the story unfolded."

Filmz.de rounds up reviews in the German papers.

The Boston Herald's Stephen Schaefer: "In a way this is a Cannes tradition, that the opening night film be a bust."

Moira Sullivan finds "few instances of cinematic magic" but more than a few odd moments to chew on.

Updates, 5/18: The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw: "It was like Spamalot without the jokes, though the revelation at the end got a storm of incredulous laughter and the owl-like hooting that French audiences use to express derision. It was a very bizarre, very silly beginning to the festival." Also, Charlotte Higgins calls it "one of the most turgid and swollen pieces of dullery I have ever had the misfortune to watch" and demands action: "Code haters unite!"

Owen Gleiberman for Entertainment Weekly: "The surprise, and disappointment, of The Da Vinci Code is how slipshod and hokey the religious detective story now seems."

Oh, look, a positive review. Roger Ebert: "Dan Brown's novel is utterly preposterous; Ron Howard's movie is preposterously entertaining.... The movie works; it's involving, intriguing and constantly seems on the edge of startling revelations."

Greg Burk in the LA Weekly: "Howard and cinematographer Salvatore Totino have turned the book's encyclopedia asides into nice visual abstracts of blood and conflict, with arty dissolves, grainy textures and Renaissance pigmentations; Hanks's solo spiel about the Emperor Constantine is a classy bit of fireside storytelling. The problem is the pace, which suffers when demands of explication force Howard to pull his foot off the gas." Also, Scott Foundas finds it "spectacularly awful in ways that I suspect even the most cynical appraisers of Brown's novel couldn't quite have anticipated."

Time Out's Dave Calhoun: "If ever there was a movie marriage made in hell it was that between novelist Dan Brown and film director Ron Howard."

Christopher Kelly in the Star-Telegram: "[C]ompetently made but resolutely unexciting... It takes an unprecedented cultural phenomenon - an addictive thriller that somehow manages to speak equally to highbrows and lowbrows, teenagers and senior citizens, true believers and die-hard atheists - and makes it seem like no big deal at all."

Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Though it's tempting to deal in extremes when talking about the year's most anticipated picture, the truth is that The Da Vinci Code is a pretty-good-but-who-cares effort, a moderately interesting diversion that will hold audiences in the moment but leave them unmoved and unchanged."

James Christopher in the Times of London: "Yes, the film is a cat’s cradle of lunatic ideas with lashings of religious psychobabble, but it's infinitely easier to forgive than the book that begat it."

Updates, 5/19: Dana Stevens in Slate: "Ron Howard... has squandered an opportunity to treat us to a big, dumb summer movie that could have combined the occult frisson of The Exorcist with the paranoid energy of All the President's Men."

Annie Wagner in the Stranger: "Everything about this movie is boiled until tough."

In the Guardian, Jonathan Gibbs finds a few good reviews, but admits the overwhelming majority are pans. Even so, "Critics don't kill films, and for the cast-iron combination of Hanks, Howard and Brown to fail at the box office it would require some level of conspiracy that not even the combined forces of the Catholic church and the liberal press could muster."

Stephanie Zacharek in Salon: "There's nothing assaultive about The Da Vinci Code; because it isn't loaded with noisy action, you get the sense that it was at least made for grownups. But its aura of stiff dignity works against it, too. The picture just doesn't have enough zing - it's so stately that it almost seems to be apologizing in advance for any potential controversy it might cause."

Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post: "The most controversial thriller of the year turns out to be about as exciting as watching your parents play Sudoku."

Michael Atkinson in the Voice: "The book may've magnetized readers with explications of Christian lore that draws too much uninterrogated devotion as it is, but the movie ends up feeling like a long-winded History Channel special with movie stars and car chases."

Updates, 5/20: Julie Bosman measures the reach of the Da Vinci Code "brand" in the NYT.

Chuck Tryon: "Brandeis University American studies professor Thomas Doherty has a timely op-ed article in the Washington Post drawing connections between the release of The Da Vinci Code and the old Hays Code that imposed constraints on the content of Hollywod films."

Jim Emerson has a damn serious rant: "If 21st Century Christians still aren't aware of what, exactly, makes them Christians to begin with - what beliefs differentiate them from other Abrahamic religions - then, I'm sorry, you can hardly blame 2003's or 2006's The Da Vinci Code for that."

"Did Cannes kill the Code?" asks Sandy Mandelberger at Fest21.

Update, 5/21: So everyone went anyway. The news is all over, but Nikki Finke had it first: "Sony Pictures told me exclusively this morning that Da Vinci Code earned $224 million worldwide, making it the second biggest opening weekend of all time worldwide."

Mary Magdalene makes the cover of Newsweek.

Meanwhile, have you noticed that the backlash against the backlash has begun? Not just in Newsweek, where columnist Jon Meacham admits he "kind of liked" the movie. But elsewhere, too. Even among the Cinemarati, low iq canadian writes, "Yes, the film is pedestrian, but more of a power walker than the slow shuffler I had expected."

Update, 5/25: David Walsh at WSWS: "The argument that popular conviction is 'what really counts,' not rational argumentation, is pernicious. 'Countercultural' myth is not preferable to right-wing myth. Brown's followers simply engage in wishful thinking: 'This is how we wish things were, so let’s invent a fable that comforts us.' It is rather pathetic. This approach encourages self-indulgence and laziness, and blocks anyone from a genuine understanding of history as a law-governed process."

Posted by dwhudson at May 17, 2006 8:30 AM