Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today on how some movie reviewers are reacting to “The Da Vinci Code”:
“All of us are given to inconsistencies, but few merit the label ‘rank hypocrite.’ Jami Bernard, film critic for the New York Daily News, falls in the latter category.
“In her two-and-a-half star review of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ today, Bernard says that ‘It’s the must-see movie of the summer, if only because of the religious protests akin to the uproar over the Danish political cartoons. We’re living in dangerous times when a merely okay summer movie can make everyone forget the golden rule: It’s only a movie, folks.’
“Now let’s see if I understand her logic. Those like myself who have been critical of ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ and have asked for a disclaimer—not even a boycott—are morally identical to machete-wielding Muslims who want to chop people’s heads off for publishing a non-obscene cartoon of Muhammad. Got it.
“By contrast, Bernard was so horrified by ‘The Passion of the Christ’ that she warned, ‘No child should see the movie. Even adults are at risk.’ She called the Mel Gibson classic ‘the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II.’ So what happened to the ‘It’s just a movie, folks’ line of reasoning? It must have been more than just a movie to cause this woman to tremble in public.
“Bernard gives away her hand when she says of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ that ‘The movie is so nervous about offending anyone that it’s hardly any fun.’ In other words, if Ron Howard had delivered a knock-out anti-Catholic film, she would have given it four stars. It obviously never occurred to her that according to her own logic, she should have given Mel’s movie five stars: after all, he wasn’t nervous about scaring the daylights out of her. To top it off, she didn’t find his flick fun. Where’s her sense of humor?”a
