The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

[See associated entry, The Da Vinci Cod, in Teflon Rants.]

Watched DVC on 19 May. 9.15pm show. Watched it at Jurong East.

NEVER EVER WATCH ANYTHING AT JURONG EAST. It is about the most backwater cinema I've ever visited. It's even worse than surviving those lascivious Chee Koh Peks (wah, I even make it sound like a proper name!) at Yang-tze.

I remember I watched the Kamasutra at Yang-tze and the old men were all complaining about the time it took for the lead actress to turn around after stripping. And also for the male lead to show it all. They were loudly cursing about paying to watch nudity but not seeing any. Then, as a 21 year old undergraduate, I thought it baseless and crass. Looking back, hey! These folks probably slogged their lives away building Singapore. For all I know, many of them hadn't have the money to see anything stark naked, except in the cinemas (thank you for the R(A) rating!). So I told myself I'm not watching no f*ck-fest at Yang-tze again. Never am I going to be caught there. Not at least till I'm taking Viagra to keep it up. Oh, never mind.

Jurong East is bad. Bad bad bad. The toilet had a lingering stale stench of piss and sweat. It's like having a bunch of super-sweaty men inside there peeing millions of gallons into the urinals and letting their stinky sweat permeate, no, make that replace, the entire atmosphere of odourless air to sweat infused air. The cinema was old and the aircon was probably turned on most minimally.

I wonder why I had to be sweating in a 40% (or maybe less) filled cinema, wondering when my next waft of cool air will come (it never did!). The partially reclining seat was old and the cushion was worn out. Again, I have a painful butt one hour into a 150 minute agony fest. The show was slow.

DVC stayed true to the book. The book was great. But not all great books make great movies. Just like not many great movies make great reading stuff. The screenplay adapter probably needs to relearn his craft. Dan Brown writes rivetingly. But the long-haired Tom Hanks needed to realise that DVC is not Forrest Gump in France. His facial expression moved from looking mildly scared and mildly bewildered, if you could tell the difference at all.

Tatou, the female lead, was an intelligent bimbo. Or bimbotic genius. You choose. I can't which was which. When I read a report on the choice of Tatou to shut the French Press (not for making coffee) up, I had a hunch that it's going to be a yawn (without the coffee). I mean, I have yet to figure how a person could be so methodical in acting that she knew what to do at certain times and entirely clueless at others.

Only thing that made me sit up? When her car's side mirror was knocked off by a rubbish truck. That's the only time I felt any anguish - the car acted well.

The supposed albino who applied torture devices on himself forgot his red contact lenses (albinos have red eyes owing to lack of pigments) and the torture was not harsh enough. I mean, the Chinese do better when interrogating suspects. Place him through a round of interrogation and he'll probably wish he was whipping himself in his own balls (for it would have been less painful).

The plot was great on paper. Somehow, it was great on paper. But on screen, the combination of people simply didn't seem to work.

The on-screen chemistry was absent. Terribly absent.

Fache was a pathetic excuse for a French bulldog. My toy dog can be more ruthless than that.

By the time they reached the safe deposit box place at 24 Whatever Road, my butt was so painful and I was already so irritated by the prostitute in front of me that I was contemplating if I should say what each actor was going to do next.

Then I remembered that most of the audience would have read the book.