It looks like the Da Vinci Code might actually turn out to be a disappointment. If so, I would hardly be surprised, since the pleasure of reading the book was not because it was a thriller (which it hardly was), but because of all the details (however fake) it contained. It is very hard to capture all of that into a couple of hours of film (remember THHGTTG?)
“‘Nothing really works. It’s not suspenseful. It’s not romantic. It’s certainly not fun,’ said Stephen Schaefer of the Boston Herald. ‘It seems like you’re in there forever. And you’re conscious of how hard everybody’s working to try to make sense of something that basically perhaps is unfilmable.’ [Reuters]
If all else fails, you can always fall back on the porn parody to entertain you.. in this case, The Da Vinci Load! It’s a pity that the creativity that goes into the names of pornos never shows up in the actual movie itself, but this one might be an exception:
Operatives of the Priory of S__en, including pen__e profiler Dr. Nadia Saint (Missy Monroe) discover that Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa using his own sp__m. Determined to resurrect Da Vinci and overjoyed that the master’s sp__m was not all �lost up a man’s a__�, they steal the painting and kill anyone who gets in their way.
[Unsanitized version here - NSFW]
Since the Da Vinci Code is a potential downer, it doesn’t feel so bad to know that it might be banned in parts of the world thanks to the zealous protectors of religion who feel so threatened by it.