Saw it yesterday at our local movie house. Yes, it's got a really ludicrous plot (I laughed out loud, just like the Cannes audience). Yes, it is anti-Catholic (they could have changed the name of Opus Dei to something fictional, like "Carpe Diem"). But it is a roller-coaster of a movie, lots of entertainment--car chases, castles, airplanes, priests, tombs, museums, professors, French, English, Italians...I liked The Da Vinci Code.It has nostalgia value, too, like those 60s thrillers with Cary Grant and Audsrey Hepburn running around Europe accused of a crime he didn't commit, running from people without knowing why. American innocence confronting European horror.
BTW Ron Howard did a good directing job. And Tom Hanks is just fine, as is Mlle. Tatou and the supporting cast. Ian McKellen steals the show with his good-guy/bad-guy/who knows what? English lord star turn.
Favorite line: "I've got to get to a library!"
Not to be taken seriously. But a lot of fun. Plus, I love the cinematic references to "A Beautiful Mind" in the puzzle-solving scenes when Tom Hanks sees glowing letters and swirling orbs. The protagonist of that earlier Ron Howard/Akiva Goldsman film--as all you Harvard symbology professors reading this surely know--was a paranoid schizophrenic.
