MOVIES
The New Yorker: DaVinci Code Review
There has been much debate over Dan Brown’s novel ever since it was published, in 2003, but no question has been more contentious than this: if a person of sound mind begins reading the book at ten o’clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03, shortly after I read the opening sentence: “Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.” With that one word, “renowned,” Brown proves that he hails from the school of elbow-joggers—nervy, worrisome authors who can’t stop shoving us along with jabs of information and opinion that we don’t yet require. (Buried far below this tic is an author’s fear that his command of basic, unadorned English will not do the job; in the case of Brown, he’s right.)
Between this review and the lashing that Mark Kermode gave this horrible, horrible movie, my faith in humanity has been somewhat restored. I’ve been trying desperately to make people realize that The DaVinci Code is unmitigated crap from the first word since that terrible first Christmas after it was released when I literally could not go into a bookstore without hearing at least one person go on and on about the book. Now that the movie has come out and it’s also crap (but how could it not be really?) it turns out that the only people unafraid to knock the thing are the movie critics. Good for them.
