During the last couple of days the majority of Catholic blogs have linked to negative reviews of The Da Vinci Code movie, kind of a gloat bloat has appeared. It of course makes us quite happy that the film is a stinker since less people will be influenced negatively by it, or that the film makes Dan Brown’s propositions even dumber (if that’s possible).
I think something else is going on though. What if Methodist Ron Howard took one for the team? After all is he a quite capable, though not great, director. What if he purposely gave the movie the Springtime for Hitler treatment? That he purposely made the movie bad. By doing the movie himself he insures that no one else will make it anytime soon. He also has some great plausible deniability when it comes to doing this. After his remake of the "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" people are quite willing to accept that he is quite capable of a stinker. So thank you Ron Howard.
Update: I guess I wasn’t the only one thinking this. Amy Welborn posted a comment from Jules called "Springtime for Constantine"
11 comments
Yeah, yeah..and Greek Orthodox Tom Hanks played along woodenly to support the stinkage (with his “Bonfire of the Vanities” creds as plausibile deniablity).
I’ll bet there are clues within the film which they put there to tell us what they were doing!
You know, I thought I saw “WWJD” in the hairdo of the female lead in one of the movie stills.
Where’s a symbologist when you need one!
That might be a viable premise except for the fact that the book, as art or literature or even entertainment, stunk and that didn’t stop it from being read.
Heard a disturbing snippet on NPR this a.m. that China has received 400 prints of the movie and that this represents the larget single opening of a foreign film in that country ever. Now why is it, do you think, that the vehemently anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-religion- of-any-kind (except for worship of the state) government of China would want this film in front of so many of its good citizens?
The Chinese government has a deal with Sony Pictures for other programming.
Sony and China have a deal? Yet another reason to not buy Sony!
Jeff,
You must be a saint because that is the most charitable excuse I have heard about this film! Of course, nobody says that the saints weren’t sometimes wrong! Especially when they were being charitable about the most awful sinners.
Remember, “If You Love Jesus, Don’t Buy SONY!”
Ha, I love it. Sounds almost…conspiritorial.
Holy cow!!! I never thought of that. If you start at page six of the script, and you read the 66th word on every 6th page after that, it says: “Take one on the chin for Jesus!”
Oh my… The prince of deceit being hoist on his own petard… Priceless.
Well, if that is the case, we’d better help out by continuing to lambaste the film and question their intent for making it.
who listens to NPR!!!? 🙂
I guess i’m in the minority because I thought the grinch was spot on and a credit to both Howard and Carrey. Though I agree it’s possible he took one for the team, I think it much more likely he’s just a rat. After all, he’d be the first artist I’ve heard of deliberately ruining the work just because he didn’t like the subject.
“I thought the grinch was spot on and a credit to both Howard and Carrey.”
Yipes.
My favorite part of the Grinch was the married couples are shown at the “swinging” Christmas party putting their room keys in a dish as they conga around the room.
Thank, Ron for that bit of family entertainment!