| "Ron Howard's splendid
"The Da Vinci Code" is the Holy Grail of summer blockbusters: a
crackling, fast-moving thriller that's every bit as brainy and
irresistible as Dan Brown's controversial bestseller. . .
Pursued by the police and Silas, the fugitives enlist the help of the
enigmatic Sir Leigh Teabing (the splendid Ian McKellen), a former
mentor of Langdon's. Teabing relates a fantastic plot (rendered in
lavish flashbacks and backed up by clues in The Last Suppper) to cover
up the explosive historic truth about Jesus Christ - and Mary
Magdalene." |
Lou Loumenick,
New York Post |
| "Thank the deity of
your choice for Ian McKellen, who shows up just in time to give "The
Da Vinci Code" a jolt of mischievous life. He plays a wealthy and
eccentric British scholar named Leigh Teabing. Hobbling around
on two canes, growling at his manservant, Remy (Jean-Yves Berteloot),
Teabing is twinkly and avuncular one moment, barking mad the next. Sir
Ian, rattling on about Italian paintings and medieval statues, seems
to be having the time of his life. . . Teabing, who strolls out of
English detective fiction by way of a Tintin comic, is a marvelously
absurd creature, and Sir Ian, in the best tradition of British actors
slumming and hamming through American movies, gives a performance in
which high conviction is indistinguishable from high camp." |
A.O. Scott,
The New York Times |
| "The
real star of the show is Sir Leigh Teabing, played by Ian McKellen. The British actor steals the show as the eccentric and crippled
Priory Of Sion expert who provides the audience with huge swathes of
plot info about the Catholic Church's darkest secret." |
Beci Wood,
The Sun |
| "Sir Ian
McKellen appears about a quarter to half way through the proceedings
and very sublimely scores himself an Academy Award nomination." |
Roger Friedman,
Fox News |
| "Ian McKellen
provides the most magnetic character. He is fabulously arch as the
rich eccentric who harbours the refugees and the even greater desire
to explode the greatest myth ever invented." |
James Christopher,
The Times |
| "McKellen, a pro’s pro,
lends suavity and power to the Leigh Teabing role" |
Richard Corliss,
Time |
| "And then there's
Ian McKellen, who could have walked on a sound stage and read the
entire Bible and made it worthy of a $10 movie ticket. As Sir Leigh
Teabing, the eccentric millionaire grail expert who provides Robert
and Sophie with sanctuary and more answers than they'd hoped for,
McKellen flat-out steals every moment he inhabits. He livens things
up, immediately and gracefully, as a brilliant but dirty old man
wandering around his cluttered French castle with a pair of canes and
a mind full of conspiracy theories." |
Christie Lemire,
Associated Press |
| "Ian McKellen's
playful, crusty turn as Leigh Teabing, the scholar who hobbles around
on twin canes, spouting happy rhetoric about the meaning of the
Grail." |
Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly |
| "The Da Vinci Code is a
McKellen film as surely as David Copperfield is a Micawber novel.
Nothing else matters when he is around. His contribution is so witty
and inventive – twirling lines like pipe-cleaner animals, surfing
octaves, turning banalities into bons mots – that the former stage
thespian must be recaptured for Shakespeare and the live theatre as
fast as possible, if necessary by violence and abduction." |
Nigel Andrews,
Financial Times |
