Ron Howard’s Crimes Against Humanity

A.O. Scott’s review of the The Da Vinci Crap (“Ron Howard’s adaptation of Dan Brown’s best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence”) is a goldmine for lovers of snark. Before reading it, though, I had forgotten about a particularly odious part of Howard’s oeuvre:

Luckily I lack the learning to address the first two questions. As for the third, well, it’s long, and so is the movie. “The Da Vinci Code,” which opened the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, is one of the few screen versions of a book that may take longer to watch than to read. (Curiously enough Mr. Howard accomplished a similar feat with “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” a few years back.)

Yikes–I didn’t realize that Howard had taken responsibility for that particular act of terrorism. I know this is a strong claim to make, but I think that Howard’s Grinch was considerably worse than the typical Christmas movie shown on an airline. You know the one, where the kids have to get the divorced parents back together on Christmas, and you don’t know whether to fall asleep or puke? It was worse. And I love the original cartoon; one of my few memories of the first home I lived in until Grade 1 was asking my father in July when the Grinch would come on again. The only good thing about that abomination is that at least we didn’t have to read a lot of articles whining about how poor Jim Carrey was getting stiffed by the Oscars; the bad news was that Carrey was even more irritating than usual.

I wonder if J-Pod is still claiming that Cinderella Man is one of the best films ever made?