I Love Movie Critics

Ross Douthat on the Da Vinci Code:

The reviews keep trickling in, and though they're nearly all negative, they're still irritating the sacred feminine out of me. Here's Richard Corliss, for instance:

Beneath the chases and crashes, the chalices and cilices, [the movie] denies Jesus’ divinity. As Teabing (perhaps not the most trustworthy authority) says in the movie, “The Greatest Story Ever Told is a lie!” And further still: the film challenges the belligerence that too often adheres to religious believers, the wars and atrocities perpetrated in His name. “Who is God, who is man?” asks Sophie. “How many have been murdered over this question?” I’m not taking sides on that issue. But for a mainstream, $125 million summer movie to raise it, let alone suggest a negative answer, in a cultural environment already politicized and polarized by religious debate, takes big steel balls. I didn’t know Opie had ’em.

Ah, yes - because there are so few Hollywood films that dare to suggest that faith isn't that important, that Christians got Christ all wrong, that people shouldn't ever dream of fighting over religion. Why, there hasn't been a mainstream, $125 million summer movie that took that position since way back in . . . 2005.