I've seen better -- lots better -- but I liked it. It wasn't about Jesus, though. It wasn't really about Christianity, either. It was a political intrigue involving rival religious organizations.

The critics are right about the lack of chemistry between Hanks and Tautou, but that didn't bother me much.

Ian McKellan owned every scene he was in.

I think it says something uncomplimentary about the storytelling that a lot of the tension, for me, involved watching the person I knew was the archvillain manipulate everyone else. If I hadn't known that going in, I don't know whether I would have cared.

As a statement of history, suffice it to say that whenever religion is co-opted by politics the result is suppression of dissent in the name of God. It doesn't matter if the politician is the Emperor Constantine, Savonarola, or any one of thousands of religious despots whose names I can't recall right now. A basic and homely truth, used like a paper cone to support a structure of sugar. The cotton candy was fun, but not much nutritional value.

An aside: To blame the oppression of women on Christianity is more of a stretch than I care to support. Women have been oppressed before there was Christianity, and also in places that never had much use for it. Christianity was no more guilty than other organizations seeking to control their populations. The problem with Christianity is not so much what its followers did, but that, based on their faith, they were supposed to know better.