Who cares what the reviews say

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | The Da Vinci Code : Who cares what the reviews say?: "Movies that appear in hundreds of reviewers' top 10s - such as Michael Hanneke's Hidden and Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale - are unlikely ever to appear in box-office charts. This is because critics are giving marks for originality, acting, photography and scripting, while mass audiences are more drawn to familiarity of genre, stars they would like to have sex with or plots that are more likely to make their dates have sex with them. Reviewers are doing their day's work, cinema-goers are escaping from theirs: this leads to an inevitable difference of response.

The film director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead) has confessed that he regularly checks one internet site - Rotten Tomatoes - on which multiple opinions are averaged out of 10. By yesterday, The Da Vinci Code was scoring a more than decent 6.7, although it should be noted that nothing would prevent a mass-vote by people with an interest in the film."