On the heels of yesterday’s post, we’re in for a bit of fun today. I thought I’d pick apart a nasty review of The DaVinci Code. People have been way, WAY too happy to rag on Dan Brown lately. I’m not sure why people are so insecure, or feel he needs to be taken down 25 notches. My guess is it has something to do with jealousy, or bitterness over the attention that novel has received. It’s like watching a bunch of catty bitches comment on the unpopular girl’s sudden popularity.

Without further ado, I present you a stinky mound of bitterness by Anthony Lane.

“I must say that, though I have recited the Nicene Creed throughout my adult life, I never realized that it was originally formulated in the middle of a Beastie Boys concert.”

How witty! A popular culture reference in regards to a scene which bears no resemblance to the reference.

“He works for Opus Dei, the Catholic organization so intensely secretive that its American headquarters are tucked away in a seventeen-story building on Lexington Avenue.”

Would he prefer Area 51? What exactly constitutes an intensely secretive location? And what might be a better organization given the theme of the novel? Oh, but providing solutions is not the role of the critic. How dare I suggest such a constructive role for any kind of critic, much less this one.

“The task of the Bishop and his hit man is to thwart the unveiling of what Teabing modestly calls “the greatest secret in modern history,” so powerful that, “if revealed, it would devastate the very foundations of Christianity.” Later, realizing that this sounds a little meek and mild, he stretches it to “the greatest coverup in human history.” As a rule, you should beware of any movie in which characters utter lines of dialogue whose proper place is on the advertising poster.”

It’s called good marketing. Try it sometime! Is the critic saying that the idea itself lacks controversy? It should be obvious that a story like The DaVinci code makes use of overstatement. Leave understatement for art-house. And I thought the general complaint about marketing in the big evil world is that it’s too often cheap and tacked-on. So here The DaVinci Code actually uses content FROM the novel/movie for its marketing and advertising. I think that shows a bit of integrity, don’t you? Instead of what we’re used to–a cheap and inauthentic message tacked on after the fact. That sir, is exactly the problem with most marketing and why marketing in general gets a bad name. What The DaVinci Code has done in the marketing department should be applauded, and if anything the bitterness evident through the review and lit world only proves that.

“Should we mind that forty million readers—or, to use the technical term, “lemmings”—have followed one another over the cliff of this long and laughable text? I am aware of the argument that, if a tale has enough grip, one can for a while forget, if not forgive, the crumbling coarseness of the style; otherwise, why would I still read “The Day of the Jackal” once a year? With “The Da Vinci Code,” there can be no such excuse. Even as you clear away the rubble of the prose, what shows through is the folly of the central conceit, and, worse still, the pride that the author seems to take in his theological presumption.”

Ah, so now any mass fans of a novel are ‘lemmings’ and The DaVinci Code, a pop novel, is being evaluated as a theological work. I think a certain writer for the New Yorker woke up one day and got confused about which genre he was reviewing. But let him continue…

“How timid—how undefended in their powers of reason—must people be in order to yield to such preening?”

First, does constructing your sentences like Shakespearean English make you sound smart? Second, somebody please pick up the Clue Phone and hand it to Mr. Lane. THE DAVINCI CODE IS FICTION.

And here we get to the most telling part of his review;

Despite repeated attempts, I have never managed to crawl past page 100. As I sat down to watch “The Da Vinci Code,” therefore, I was in the lonely, if enviable, position of not actually knowing what happens.

So, the critic couldn’t hack 100 pages of a fluffy popcorn novel. That tells me two things:

1. He doesn’t have the patience to read or sit through very much fiction. If he can’t make it through The DaVinci Code, I have my doubts he could make it through anything meatier. Why is he a critic, then?
2. If he couldn’t hack 100 pages of the novel, how far do you think he’s going to get into the movie before Mr. Cranky Pants turns on? He clearly went into it with a cynical attitude. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never enjoyed a film when I approach it with that kind of pretense. And that is exactly what Mr. Lane is being–pretentious.

“Howard’s film is that it is far too dense and talkative to function efficiently as a thriller, while also being too credulous and childish to bear more than a second’s scrutiny as an exploration of religious history or spiritual strife.”

Well, at least we finally got our money’s worth from the critic. Yes, perhaps The DaVinci Code is too dense and talkative to function efficiently as a thriller. However, isn’t this the problem in adapting any novel to the screen?

As for an exploration of religious history or spiritual strife… again, it’s a work of fiction–NOT a theological thesis. I wish critics like Anthony Lane could get that one correct. You don’t see anyone raising the theological inaccuracies towards Raiders of the Lost Ark, do you?

The critic is making claims here that DaVinci Code functions poorly as an exploration of religious history and spiritual strife. Like Mr. Lane’s review on the whole, that kind of nitpick is irrelevant.

What we end up with at the end of his ‘critique’ is a smoldering stew of bitter cynicism, and not many fine points of contention over The DaVinci Code as a work of storytelling. I thought the point of a review was to find out whether a book or film was worth enduring? What I got instead, was a sense that Lane is a cynical person who can’t sit through 100 pages of a pop novel or twenty minutes of a pop film.

Not exactly an enlightened ‘critique’ — do you think?

I thought reviews were meant to provide indication of weakness or strength of the work, rather than a soapbox of hatred towards blockbuster successes!