broken code

Everyone read the DA VINCI CODE, and now it seems that everyone is seeing the movie based on the book. After I read the book (yes, I was one of the 40 million) and I heard about the film, I was worried. I didn’t think they could capture what made the book interesting for me. Unfortunately, I was right.Aside from being poorly written, the novel had a really thin story. There was nothing that interesting in the actual plot of the book. It was running from one clue to another avoiding the bad guys and the police. What captured my attention was the exploration of the symbology and the historical and religious implications contained within. The plot just served as some sugar to make the information easier for the masses to accept. Reading the book made me look at pieces of art in a way that I never had before and it opened up the potential of a conspiracy that would shake the foundation of the church. I found that really interesting. What the movie did was focus on the weak plot and gloss over all of the information that I found fascinating. What was left was nothing more than a glorified video game without action. You go from clue to clue for no other reason than to get to the next clue. When you find the answer to the new riddle, it is portrayed as “obvious”, but is actually so random it could not be obvious to anyone except the writer that created the clue.The acting is as bland as you could possibly get. When you take out most of the symbology, there becomes no point for a symbologist to be in the movie. Tom Hanks is dry and bland, but that is more the characters fault than his. He just walks through the movie and seems bored as he does it. Audrey Tautou plays Sophie who is intelligent one minute and seems stupid and incompetent the next. While she is a cop, when she holds a gun, she could not look more uncomfortable. Paul Bettany as the crazy killer Silas, is just silly. His performance is relegated to looking like he smells something bad and staring with wide eyes as he tries to be creepy. The only character that I liked in the film was Sir Teabing (Ian McKellan). He was the only one that had a little fun and therefore he was the only on that was kinda fun to watch.I like Ron Howard, but here he struggles to make this film visually interesting. How? The letters glow in A BEAUTIFUL MIND style and he relies on flashbacks when they are talking to make it a little more interesting. It failed. This movie is just plain boring. The worst thing is that it runs a very clunky two and a half hours. Why? The plot is so simple it is boring and most of the interesting information was left out. If you are going to try and make a chase movie, make a chase movie and have it be exciting and fast paced with action and suspense.While watching DA VINCI CODE I was brought back to a movie that was made a year and a half ago. It had a similar subject matter, but was just an action movie and a chase movie. That flick was NATIONAL TREASURE and you know what? It is a better movie. There is shallowness to it, but I had fun watching it. There are some good chase moments and some cool action. It really felt like that was the movie that Howard was trying to make and what he ended up with was a mess because he had to be faithful to one of the most popular books of recent memory.Maybe DAVINCI CODE is just better as a book and should have stayed that way. All that I know is that the movie didn’t work. Most of the blame (or credit if you like it) falls of the shoulders of screenwriter Akiva Goldsman. He took a poorly written book and delivered a poorly written, clunky mess.