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I watched this small, petty film last night, and the only reason I wasn't disappointed is that I had very, very low expectations of it. In case you've been hiding under a rock for the whole of Dan Brown's mysterious success, Tom Hanks plays Robert Langdon, a superduper brilliant "symbologist" who's implicated in a cryptic murder in the Louvre and thereafter stumbles upon the ultimate coverup.
But in typical "dumbest common denominator" fashion, the story can't make Langdon too smart, or the anesthetized brain cells in the audience will find him off-putting, so they make him faux smart instead. Here are a few paraphrases of the kind of deeply intellectual exchanges you can expect if you decide to waste two hours on the movie (or an hour and a half on the insipid book):
Langdon: We have to stop the car here. Sofia: How do you know this? Langdon: That red, eight-sided sign there is a common symbol for "stop" in many cultures. Sofia: Amazing!
Langdon: It's midnight. Sofia: How can you know this? Landgon: The two strips of metal in my wristwatch are pointing to the 12. Sofia: Amazing!
Lee: A cup is commonly used as a drinking vessel. Langdon: Not if it's empty. Lee: But if it's full, what then? Then you can drink out of it. Sofia: How can you know this? Lee: Why, Robert is drinking from a teacup even now. Langdon: Oh, come on. There's no empirical proof of that. Lee: My dear boy, look at your hand. You're holding that cup, and you are drinking out of it, are you not? Sofia: Amazing!
And on and on.
I don't need every moviegoing experience to be a deep exploration of the nature of humanity, but a film that's billed as an intellectual thriller should, at the very least, be either intellectual or thrilling.
Anyone else have a similar take on this drab and wholly uninteresting piece of celluloid?
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