Completely clueless Da Vinci

The movie of The Da Vinci Code has one inestimable advantage over the novel. Utilising the moving picture, it has effectively eliminated most of Dan Brown's plodding prose. It's not all good news, though. It has retained lots of his execrable dialogue.

The film is punishingly faithful to the book, from first to last. We begin with the murder in the Louvre of the curator, Jacques Sauniere, by the glaring albino monk Silas, played by Paul Bettany, displaying marginally more charisma than the rest of the cast, otherwise an oddly illfavoured crew.

As the "symbologist" hero Robert Langdon, large Tom Hanks sports impressive bags under the eyes with matching jowls, while his furrowed brow suggests headache more than deep thought.

As the heroine Sophie Neveu, wee Audrey Tautou is more good-looking, provided one doesn't hope for too much in the way of emotion, animation or expressive speech. Alfred Molina plays lardy Bishop Aringarosa just this side of a bit part in Blackadder, while Ian McKellen does Sir Leigh Teabing proud, delivering a full-out caricature of a tweedily affected millionaire.

The Da Vinci Code is, for the best-selling thriller of all time, bizarrely unwieldy. It's really just one long chase, from the Louvre to the private bank, from Teabing's chateau to London, the Templar Church and Westminster Abbey, and then finally to Rosslyn Chapel in Edinburgh.

Robert and Sophie lead the way, pursued by armed police, generally travelling in large convoys, dogged by the maddened monk. At each stage, there's a dismal little clue to be deciphered to lead on to the next - an anagram, a mystery key, a bit of mirror-writing, a combination lock...

No amount of suspense, however, could bear the quantity of exposition laid upon it. We are laboriously instructed in the history of Jesus and the Church, the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail, Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion, by the device of one character telling another, usually dim Sophie, all about it, in the style of an article from the Reader's Digest.

In a thoroughly welcome outbreak of hilarious bad taste, the director Ron Howard has chosen to illustrate these cod history lessons with flashbacks depicting the events in question to help those at the back of the class.

We actually saw, albeit hazily, pagan Romans cavorting, Mary Magdalene giving birth, and, best of all, the Council of Nicaea upgrading Jesus to a deity in 325AD in a crowd scene that's like a toga-clad rave.

With 25 million copies sold, it is difficult to imagine many viewers will not know the silly secret which The Da Vinci Code finally delivers. When Audrey Tautou, quite remarkably slow on the uptake throughout, especially given her pedigree, is finally told that she is herself the big cheese, she exclaims "Quoi!" and looks rightly surprised.