A Ron Howard duo

Finally saw The da Vinci Code. It's one of those novels that doesn't translate well to the screen (duh). But it wasn't the code-solving sequences that stuck out, it was the other stuff. It's one thing to have your albino hitman walking around in a monk's robe in a novel. It's another thing to see it on screen--the perfect guy to blend in with the crowd, NOT. Then there's the super-complex switch around in the Knight's Templar temple. On paper the clumsiness of the action is obscured. On film, it's absurd. It's not Ron Howard's fault. It's just undirectable. And then there's the dramatic final scene with a not-particularly threatening villain. Yeesh, even I could take the guy out.

I was a bit surprised by the look of the film. I imagined something rich, dark, arcane. But watching Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou traipse through a contemporary Paris shot flat and grayish was a bit disappointing. And the way they shot Audrey Tatou... I kept thinking about what Quint from Jaws said: black eyes, like a doll's eyes....

Probably the most surprising thing was the way the message of the novel was changed to make even less sense. The novel focuses on the restoration of the sacred feminine. The film is about Jesus' humanity. What? Theologically the conflict doesn't make any sense. The Catholic church has never denied Jesus' humanity. Hello, Christian paradox and all that.

Right now I'm watching Curious George, another Imagine Entertainment book-to-film project that doesn't make sense. The problem here is different--how do you stretch out a series of short books to make a feature-length film? First, you answer a lot of questions no one ever asked--like how the man in the yellow hat got his yellow outfit. Maybe the George sequel will describe how the man with the yellow hat found his mitochlorians. Then you trade one set of politically incorrect ideas for another. In the book, Curious George is taken from Africa by the MWTYH to be put in a zoo. In the movie, George follows the man out of curiosity. Understandable change. But now there's this whole Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque plot surrounding the plunder of an African idol. It's like each attempt to fix something results in even more problems.