Well, Christianity is the biggest religion in the world, but c'mon! It's not like it's a problem or anything. Sure you have nutcases like Anders Breivik who use religion to glorify the slaughter of innocents, but most Christians are peaceful people. And yes, the religion has a few problems, but I could say the same thing about most religions.
And yes, the history of The Da Vinci Code is completely messed up, but it's fascinating, and the alternate history feels rich.
^That was a ridiculously defensive response...
That's the annoying thing about the Da Vinci Code, the entertainment stems from the steady drip of facts, like an episode of QI or Anathem or some other good intelligent thing, except when you step back it's all complete nonsense. It's like enjoying a history book because you think you're learning a lot but everything you're learning is wrong.
But I agree the film is silly enough to be entertaining for that reason a lot 'Quick! We need to find a library!" Google search tutorial!
@Eviel: I am not defending the book. It shows Christianity as being a problem that could be fixed if the secret was exposed to the whole world by showing Christianity as a scam, whether intentionally or not. I'm not a Christian, but there isn't anything truly wrong with Christianity where it would be crucial to destroy the religion.
@Tom: Yeah, that's exactly how I felt. I was reading the book and I thought "wow, I'm actually learning stuff", until I actually did the research.
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Truly entertaining movie!
I sometimes like to dip my toes into medieval history, I know some things but am by no means an expert, having said that this film was one of the funniest things I had seen in a long time.
Quite probably I stopped trying to take the thing seriously when it was shown that an old man had managed to crawl all the way around the Louvre (ruining several artefacts on his way) with a shot-wound in his stomach. Or was is when they were telling me that the fresco of the Last Supper had John (?) depicted with a bosom? Or maybe Mary Magdalene trotting across the continent while pregnant? Or the church suddenly! during the 16th century deciding to start witch-burning as a way to stop Magdalene's children from arising?
Ian Mc Kellen is quite mad, crippled and cool. He uses his two canes as effective weapons and spouts out delightful gibberish with such enthusiasm that we really can't stay angry at him. Tom Hanks is, well, Tom Hanks, I dislike him so I disliked him in this film but anyone who likes him in general will enjoy him here as well. I secretly think Jean Reno is the true protagonist, he was the only one with enough common sense to ignore Tom Hanks trying to be clever. Audrey Tautou was nice.
I liked how we are told that if we found Her tomb it would stop all problems in the world (because the entire world is Christian? What about Muslims and Jews who say Jesus was a prophet but not divine, how exactly is it going to change anything for them?) including, oddly enough, racism. So I would like to end by asking two questions that arose in my head: How? and Why?