Lane's conclusion:
The Catholic Church has nothing to fear from this film. It is not just tripe. It is self-evident, spirit-lowering tripe that could not conceivably cause a single member of the flock to turn aside from the faith. Meanwhile, art historians can sleep easy once more, while fans of the book, which has finally been exposed for the pompous fraud that it is, will be shaken from their trance. In fact, the sole beneficiaries of the entire fiasco will be members of Opus Dei, some of whom practice mortification of the flesh. From now on, such penance will be simple—no lashings, no spiked cuff around the thigh. Just the price of a movie ticket, and two and a half hours of pain.Ouch, babe. Read the whole thing...
2 comments:
Well that settles it then. It's utterly ridiculous to ask an audience to believe such tripe as that Jesus maybe had a wife and baby. Now that the pompous fraud has been revealed by the New Yorker, we can all feel comfortable in the established knowledge that Jesus was born from a virgin, walked on water, and rose from the dead. I feel much better about not having wasted my time on the movie.
Just Karl
I think Lane's review was one of the great scathing reviews of all time. He should be nominated for a Pulitzer!
Here's my favorite section n- it's priceless:
As a rule, you should beware of any movie in which characters utter lines of dialogue whose proper place is on the advertising poster. (Just imagine Sigourney Weaver, halfway through “Alien,” turning to John Hurt and explaining, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”) There is a nasty sense in “The Da Vinci Code” that, not unlike Langdon, we are being bullied into taking its pronouncements at face value. Such nagging has a double effect. First, any chance to enjoy the proceedings as hokum—as a whip-cracking quest along the lines of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”—is rapidly stifled and stilled. Second, one’s natural reaction to arm-twisters of any description is to wriggle free, turn around, and kick them in the pentacles. So here goes.
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