Come, Let Us Break Code Together

The Da Vinci Code is boring. It’s not just boring, it’s painfully lifeless, a gaping black hole of excitement that can’t even muster up the energy to limp along. Instead, it just lies there, totally inert, somehow expecting that we, the viewers, will drag it dutifully forth for two and a half excruciating hours. This isn't a labor of love, it's a burden of boredom.

My approach to the book has always been to dismiss it—not for its heresy, but because it is artless fluff. I have not read it, and I don’t think I will. Between the fact that I generally find populist adventure fiction along the lines of Crichton and Grisham unreadable, and the continual invocations by smart people against the book’s prose, I can be fairly sure it isn’t worth my time.

I ought to have applied the same rubric to the film. Yes, it uses a lot of bad, conspiratorial nonsense to make an incompetent attack on Catholicism (and, by proxy, anything approaching conservative Christianity). And yes, I think it’s necessary for good people like Amy Welborn to debunk the junk history employed by Brown. There are people out there who might be fooled by this crap, and it’s good to have solid research available.

But mostly, we ought to reject this plodding, tedious bit of tepid religious conspiracy-mongering because, like the book is purported to be, it is heinously bad. Aside from Audrey Tautou and her cute accent, there is absolutely nothing to like about the movie. It plays like a theological CSI—complete with leaden, expository dialog, dumb puzzles, and even the same grainy flashbacks—except with none of that show’s glitzy, shallow thrills. The editing is clumsy, slowing both action and dialog down to a sleepy crawl. The acting is languid, lacking any urgency or passion. The cinematography is surprisingly poor; director Ron Howard clearly intended things to look moody, but many scenes appear merely dim. The story is convoluted and careless, never able to figure out whether it wants to be a history lesson, an action yarn, or a paranoid thriller. Far too much time is wasted on uninvolving puzzles that seem oddly disconnected from the main action.

Worst of all, it doesn’t know when to end. Akiva Goldsman's script (it's from the same megagenius who gave us Batman and Robin and Lost in Space—how’s that for a resume?) ties up the major threat and signals that all is resolved—and then continues to plod along for another tiring half an hour. Like Return of the King, it goes on to give us numerous false endings. Unlike Return of the King, it hasn’t earned any of them. At the theater I was in, more than a dozen people walked out early.

It would be one thing to complain about the movie’s spiritual affronts if it were entertaining or compelling in the least. After seeing this film, I can’t imagine most people giving two hoots about the cilice and the discipline—watching this film is punishment enough. Since when did heresy become so dull?