THE DA VINCI CODE

Did you ever have one of those professors who would drone on and on and ON about the minutiae of whatever subject was being taught just because he or she seemed enamored with the sound of his or her own voice? That’s kind of what it’s like watching Ron Howard’s long, dull and completely inert adaptation of the bestselling Dan Brown novel of the same name. I haven’t read the novel, but a number of people have referred to it as “unfilmable.” After sitting through its 149 minutes I’d like to add a hearty and strangely appropriate, “Amen.”

Lying dead on the screen and lacking momentum almost entirely, the movie version of The Da Vinci Code takes what should be a suspense-filled treasure hunt and turns it into a mind-numbingly boring history lesson, where characters spend more time reciting informative (if tedious) soliloquies about Jesus, Christianity, secrets, secret societies, Mary Magdalene, crypts, tombs, sarcophagi, the Crusades, museums, famous paintings and all facets of the past than they do doing anything else. This might work for a novel, but it makes watching a movie an exercise in penance.

Tom Hanks is Robert Langdon, a historian specializing in symbols, who’s tapped by a wide-eyed French…cop?...named Sophie (Audrey Tautou) to help solve the murder of her grandfather, who was killed by a freakishly devout albino monk named Silas (Paul Bettany, going waaaaay over-the-top!). Silas the Albino Monk is an entertaining character, who skulks around dark corners and scuttles though dark passageways, but is so hilariously unbelievable that audience members began twittering with laughter every time he appeared onscreen. (They laughed outright when he had to seethe lines of dialogue in an accent reminiscent of Jack Black in the Nacho Libre trailer that ran just before Code started). 

Anyway, seems Silas is hell-bent (pun intended) on killing off the “guardians” of a “secret” that would completely unravel Christianity if it were to be revealed to the world. Sophie’s grandfather was one, but he has a hit list to get through. He’s been assigned to this executioner’s duty by a bishop (Alfred Molina), who’s equally intent on keeping everybody mum about what they know. So, Silas targets Robert and Sophie – who, in turn, enlist the aid of a cane-wielding Ian McKellen – and everybody runs around trying to get to the “treasure” first, be it to protect the secret or destroy any evidence of its existence. That is, of course, whenever they’re not screeching to a halt to explain, in painstaking detail and with helpful animated sequences, some random factoid about their current location.

Hanks, looking bloated, inexplicably greasy and sporting that nasty hairdo that’s become the film’s most talked-about special effect, lumbers around, but he seems too Average Joe-y to be effective in this kind of role. Like the film’s action, his Robert just flops there onscreen…not doing much but looking pensive/concerned, spewing expository dialogue and occasionally fleeing the bad guys. Hanks has zero chemistry with co-star Tautou, who’s likable and spunky and one of the few saving graces of the film, and any attempt at implied attraction just comes off as weird. Things pick up once the always-delightful Ian McKellen arrives in the story, and his character adds some much-needed oomph to the proceedings, but by then I was already looking at my watch and wondering how much longer this movie could possibly drag on. (Quite a bit longer, it turns out.)

Maybe fans of the book will feel differently and will praise the filmmakers for their efforts, but those efforts were lost on me. The action was inactive, the storytelling was extremely dense and leaden, the performances were fine but for the most part uninspired, and the Big Fat Secret everybody’s trying to track down was obvious to me shortly after their quest began.