i went to see it yesterday. i think i would give it a generous 3 out of 5. not surprisingly, it’s no where as good as the book. more so than the normal book->movie loss in translation.
there were 2 big annoyances for me. the continous bashing over the head by tom hanks/robert langdon that these are “myths” and “if you believe that sort of stuff” comments. this wasn’t in the book. it seems a bit like playing to the christian complainers. the big changes to the ending were the other problem. it’s almost as if they were shooting in chronological order (would be unusual if they did) and got to the end and said, “oh shit! this is 2.5 hours long. we have to rip some stuff out.”. there are other differences that are listed on the wikipedia page for the movie. ian mckellen was the best performance of the bunch. everyone else (aside from paul bettany as silas) seemed like they were talking to the camera/audience. the script generally seems to have not been that good. definitely not up to the level of what you normally expect from ron howard.
you might want to rent it, but i wouldn’t bother going to the theater.
then there’s the whole controversy and complaining from christian groups (and the albinos). i don’t really want to get into this, but here’s an interesting article, particulary ian mckellen’s quote. my main problem with all of this type of stuff is that these types of responses (the article, not mckellen) claim to be “preaching” the “truth” and “authority of the bible”. it’s interesting that they’re apparently wanting to hold these high standards of “truth” for the da vinci code, but don’t seem to apply that to their own beliefs.
like all fiction books/movies, it’s based on fact and fiction. i suspect that the reason this stuff has gotten so blown out of proportion is that as conspiracy theory-esque as the stuff in the book/movie is, it’s actually sounds more reasonable that the assumed “truth” in the bible. it’s very difficult to have scientific evidence when scientists didn’t even exist.
the major question is “does god exist?”. for me, the question is totally irrelevant. i will behave the same way regardless if he/she/it does or does not exist.