Da Vinci De Coded
Let me get this straight. Jesus faked his own death. He was not really the son of God. And he knocked up a prostitute, in the process spawning a bloodline which remains today. So what’s the controversy all about? In religious circles they call such a man Christ . . . in politics they call him a Kennedy.  
     The churches of Christianity have lambasted the Da Vinci Code for being a distortion of the facts, a fabrication of myths, fables and unproved legends. But is Christianity united in its opposition of the Code? Absolutely not.
     One of the tenets of this story is that, the lord, our savior, Jesus Christ did lie with a woman of ill repute and within this woman he did but sew his seed. “Halleluiah and Amen” to that story say the world’s televangelists for ours has been done. Jimmy Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart thou have truly lived thy lives in the way of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Devil is not behind this film, it’s televangelism. 
     Happy Days' favorite son, Richie Cunnigham directs this one and contemplated some serious actors for the lead role — in the end he opted for sentimentality and hired, Potsie Weber look-alike, Tom Hanks. Potsie graduated from Jefferson High, quit the band, stopped stalking Joanie and went on to get a PhD in Religious Symbology from Harvard.
    Richie then messes with Potsie’s mind by casting him alongside a French Joanie Cunnigham, in the guise of Audrey Tautou.
    Our story begins in the Louvre, with a mad monk chasing the curator around the gallery eventually gunning him down with a semi-automatic 9mm. As luck would have it: the curator has just enough time to strip naked visit three galleries in the museum, leave messages in French, English, Latin and numbered code (in invisible ink) on the floors and walls, then paint a Star of David, from his own blood, across his naked torso.
   Bon chance for the French authorities as Potsie is in Paris signing copies of his latest book. Jean Reno, who plays the lead French investigator, summons Potsie for his professional opinion on the meaning of the codes. But we soon discover Potsie is the only suspect. Joanie enters the picture, in the part of brilliant young cryptologist, Sophie Neveu. She lures Potsie into the boy’s room and points out the homing device that the French police planted on him.
   They throw the device out the toilet window, into the back of a passing garbage truck — that’s Hollywood for you, never a cop but always a garbage truck! The French cops fall for it and all dash out the door into their Renaults and Citroens in pursuit of that old movie chestnut . . . the discarded homing device.
   Meanwhile, the French police may be stupid but they’re not idiots or are they? They leave a crime scene — a murder scene no less — completely unattended. This gives Potsie and Sophie time for some small talk and to gather a few clues on the way out.
   All the while the mad monk who actually committed the murder is back at the seminary, stripped naked, moaning “mea culpa” as he indulges/engages/suffers in painful self-flagellation. The hitherto Latin-speaking mad monk dons his robes and soon crosses paths with a nun. Soon after they cross crosses and the monk finishes the nun off with a blow to the head, using a large stone tablet inscribed with a reference to chapter and verse from the book of Job. His job done, the monk then administers the Last Rights to his own victim — nice touch Richie!
   The French cops get back to the Louvre. Potsie and Sophie find the key that the murdered curator left behind and Sophie confesses that the curator is in fact her estranged grandfather. The key leads them to a safety deposit box in a 24/7 Swiss Bank in downtown Paris.
    They grab granddad’s safe deposit — a Leonardo Da Vinci designed coding machine known as a cryptex, a.k.a. ‘keystone’ (an a.k.a. for the French Police as well). Police find and surround the bank, Potsie and Sophie hide in the back of an armored truck driven by the manager, who drives past the police cordon by telling them there is nobody in the back of the truck.
   The Manager turns out to be a bad guy so Potsie and Sophie ditch him, steal the armored truck and head for the safety of the chateaux of Potsie’s most trusted confident in all of France — the unfortunately named Sir Leigh Teabing. Sir Leigh is played by Sir Ian McKellen, or Gandalf the Grey as he is known to hobbits and New Zealanders (same thing really) alike. Sir Ian brings the only the light relief of the whole picture . . . as Potsie tries desperately to spark the same chemistry that gave him his greatest on screen partnership . . . with Hooch.
  Remember Potsie is a Harvard Professor, a widely published best-selling author and the world’s leading authority on the deciphering of codes and religious symbols. Yet, he doesn’t realize that every armored truck in the world is fitted with a GPS tracking device? The cops once again arrive and once again lose the suspects who, kidnap the mad monk, race off into the night and board Sir Leigh’s private jet to escape to extradition free Zurich, only to divert to London at the last minute.
   The French cops tip off the London bobbies — who it turns out are just as dumb as the French as they allow Sir Leigh to leave the airport with Potsie and Sophie hiding in the back seat of his Roller.
   Why are they in London? To search for the Holy Grail. It is then that they make their most horrible discovery. Harrison Ford had already beat them to it . . . and, thanks to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, he beat them by 17 years.
   Potsie, Sophie and Sir Leigh go sightseeing around London, visiting the Tower, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, while Richie and Dan Brown madly re-write the script, so they can come up with another Holy Grail.
   And they do it. The cup is out and the hooker is in. Sir Leigh points out that in Leonardo Da Vinci's The Last Supper there are no cups on the dinner table. No cups means no holy wine, thus no Holy Grail . . . though in any other restaurant this just means bad service. No wine but on Christ's right is Mary Magdalene. This sweet young girl who enlisted Jesus’s help to raise the money for her mother’s operation becomes the Holy Grail. Magdalene may have been a lot of things but, obviously, if her stage name was the Holy Grail at least she wasn’t cheap.
   So Jesus marries Mary Magdalene, her womb is the metaphoric Grail and her progeny is the secret that the church is willing to kill and die for. This is what the church is afraid of becoming public knowledge? I think not.
   Sadly for Dan Brown, and the good folks at Doubleday, The Da Vinci Code is not the best selling book of all time — not even close. The number one book, that has sold almost as many copies as had them stolen from hotels, is the one and only Holy Bible. The Da Vinci Code isn’t just good publicity for its creators, it’s pretty good publicity for the folks who represent that other creator. 
    As Potsie says in his closing monologue: “The only thing that matters is what you believe.”