Ill-Informed Gadfly

It’s been called fascinating and revelatory or flaccid and lazy, but to my knowledge no one has accused “The Da Vinci Code” of being hard to understand. Yet in adapting Dan Brown’s religious-conspiracy page-turner for the screen, director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman operate as if the book flew over the heads of most of its 60 million readers. Brown violates the principles of storytelling in general and screenwriting in particular by telling, not showing, his alternate history of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Howard, never exactly a daring filmmaker, decides to stay on the safe side by telling and showing, with tossed-off, smudgy flashbacks to Biblical and medieval times. He never comes close to the breezy, breathless pedantry that led many readers at least to wish that Brown’s hypothesis were true. By paring down Brown’s vivid digressions, Howard is left with the weaker elements of “The Da Vinci Code” – a flimsy thriller plot and twee characterizations. He saps the energy from Brown’s conceit, trudging dutifully from point to point in a feckless bid to build traditional suspense.

Howard’s eagerness to please everybody becomes apparent when he gives hero Robert Langdon a mush-mouthed defense of Christian faith. Anyone frightened that the movie’s dubious assertions can’t coexist with belief is either a Biblical literalist or a rigid adherent to dogma. The rest of us don’t need any help reconciling the issues raised by “The Da Vinci Code,” but Howard is determined to provide it anyway. His movie proves that the quest for the Holy Grail is best left to Monty Python.