Director: Ron Howard
Art specialist Robert Langdon: Tom Hanks; French police cryptologist Sophie Neveu: Audrey Tautou; wealthy Holy Grail expert Sir Leigh Teabing: Ian McKellan; troubled albino monk Silas: Paul Bettany

Some books translate to film better than others.

Although Dan Brown's blockbuster begins with a murder scene grisly enough to please the director of a slasher film, for the most part, The DaVinci Code loses a lot in translation.

The novel is definitely a page-turner. When I first heard of it in October 2003, I began reading on one evening, read until I couldn't keep my eyes open, started again in the morning and had it finished by three o'clock in the afternoon.

The novel has created a minor industry of its own, selling more than 60 million copies, spawning hundreds of books imitating and refuting it, and upsetting untold numbers of church-goers.

On its opening weekend, the film grossed $147 million world-wide, $77 million in the United States. Compare these figures to those for a couple of other Hollywood money-makers: StarWars: Episode IV A New Hope (1977) grossed $1.5 million in its opening weekend; Episode I The Phantom Menace (1999) grossed $28.5 million on opening day.

Various factors have contributed to the phenomenal success of both the novel and the film:
1. People love a conspiracy theory, the more outrageous, the better.
2. As the most ancient organized religion on the planet, the Catholic Church always makes a good plot device. If fiction writers could be believed, the Vatican contains limitless stacks of unresearched documents and a maze of vaults in which documents the world mustn't know about are secreted.
3. People, especially young people, are disillusioned with established religion.

Having read Holy Blood, Holy Grail years before, I was already familiar with the notion that Mary Magdalene and Jesus had produced a son together. According to the authors of this earlier,"non-fiction," book, the descendants of this more than mystical union became, or married into, the Merovingian royal family of France.

This amazing historical revelation first came to light in the 1960's when an anti-semite named Pierre Plantard and a few of his friends dreamed it up.

Brown's writing style lacks literary quality, but he knows how to pull the reader along, dropping tantalizing bits of information at the end of each tiny chapter. Much of the plot development in the book, however, occurs in the thoughts of Robert Langdon, the albino Silas, and other characters. Since movies can't show thoughts, the film often drags as Tom Hanks creases his brow, working out things in his mind.

As entertainment, Ron Howard's film is full of car chases and suspense. The most remarkable thing about this movie is that Howard has been able to make a better than average film out of a book that relies so much on word puzzles and internal thoughts.

Tom Hanks is a comfortable presence we're used to identifying with, and Audrey Tatou brings beauty and a charming French accent, although she seems awfully young to be a police agent. Brown explains her unlikely position with the French police despite her youth and gender as "part of the ministry's attempt to incorporate more women into the police force."

Viewers who have not read the novel will get an adequate idea of what it's about by seeing the film. They'll know enough about the original to wonder how such an obviously made-up story could have ever been taken seriously.