Here’s word of advice to those serious religious types who protest movies like The Da Vinci Code. When you decry and denounce a movie before it’s released, you give it an incredible PR boost, the kind of boost that a few people in expensive suits get paid a lot of money to create. More often than not, it’s a lot of hoo-ha surrounding a so-so movie. Such is the case with The Da Vinci Code.

Just about everyone has read Dan Brown’s novel … including me and I almost never read fiction. I’ve also read Dan Brown’s first novel Angels & Demons and I’ve said before, it would make a much better movie, but back to The Da Vinci Code.

A curator of the Louvre, Jacques Sauniere (Jean-Pierre Marielle), is killed; but he didn’t die right away. Apparently he had enough time to carve clues onto his body and leave a bunch of cryptic anagrams behind him. One of the clues points directly to Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) an expert on ancient symbols – who happens to be lecturing in Paris that day. Both Inspector Fache (Jean Reno) and Sauniere’s granddaughter, detective Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautao) think that Langdon is the key to unlocking the murdered man’s mystery. In fact, Fache thinks Langdon committed the crime. Neveu, however, knows that there is more to the story so she and Langdon set off to find the truth.

Also looking for the truth are Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina), the head of Opus Dei, a very conservative Catholic sect, and his henchman, an albino monk named Silas (Paul Bettany). Everyone ends up at the French home of English Holy Grail expert Sir Leigh Teabing (Sir Ian McKellen). It’s Teabing who lays out the whole story about Jesus and Mary Magdalene being married and having a child.

In case you haven’t read the book, I’ll leave out the rest of the details. Suffice to say, there are a few twists and turns and ‘whose working for whom’ moments before its all said and done.

You know the controversy. You know the accusations. But, if you’re reading this review, what you want to know is whether or not it’s a good movie. The answer is no.

Ron Howard manages to stay faithful to the book, for the most part, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing. The book spins quite a conspiracy yarn stretching all the way back to the time of Christ. It involves the Knights Templar, the Priory of the Scion, The Council of Shadows and the Justice League. Okay, maybe not the Justice League but just about every other order and secret society had something to do with protecting the secret of the Grail.

The puzzles and the decoding of cryptograms made for an interesting read but when it’s translated to the screen, it loses steam fast. Yes, Langdon and Neveu are on the run but this is one ‘thriller’ where all the good stuff comes out in the dialogue and there is a lot of dialogue to digest in The Da Vinci Code.

As Langdon, Hanks was functional, at best, but he lacked any charisma. I always thought of Langdon as a sexy kind of cerebral professor. You know, the kind of guy that smart college co-eds have crushes on. Tautao is very pretty but she and Hanks just didn’t have any chemistry and there was a definite undercurrent of attraction to their relationship in the book. It just did not carry over into the screen.

You're better off reading the book.