The Da Vinci Code (no spoilers)

This was nothing short of a murderous assault on my attention span. There are several problems with this movie, some of which I hope result from one obvious source, which is-- OH MY GOD A GIANT TRUCK IS COMING! Now that the truck is gone, let me move on without finishing my point. One key factor in making this movie boring was the inclusion of boring characters. There are several extremely charismatic actors in this movie but of course only supporting characters with few lines get any character development... actually this may be a good time for me to strip naked and whip myself for a moment... owww... owww... owww... and the protagonist is the most boring-- OH MY GOD A CRAZED ALBINO IS ATTACKING! Okay, he seems to have gone, so let's talk about the puzzles. Here's the thing, when they're flashed up for a half second and then Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou explain them to you, it's not as intellectually stimulating as when you read them in a book, and these are all fairly run of the mill. Watching Tom Hanks solve anagrams on a pad of paper is sort of-- OH NO THE ALBINO IS BACK TO INTERRUPT ME AGAIN! There's also a problem with the Scooby Doo rule in this movie, when a scene is filmed in such a way as to create a mystery, but stays so long that you remember there's really only one possible answer to the question raised by the GOD WILL THIS ALBINO EVER LEAVE ME ALONE? HE'S BACK AGAIN! What's funny is there's a chase scene early on that's so badly filmed... did you guys know I'm claustrophobic? I don't know if I told you... oh shit I think I see the albino... false alarm. So anyways, there's a chase scene, and a scene of Audrey helping Tom relax, and... owww... owww... (just whipping my naked body again) owww... the one that's by far the most hair-raising is not the action sequence but rather the relaxation techniques scene with THE ALBINO'S HANDS ON YOUR SHOULDERS READY TO STRANGLE YOU!

I tried to approximate with this review the experience of seeing the film, which drew a LOT of yawns in between hyperactive albino attacks and albino whipping scenes strategically filmed to hide the albino's junk (that give the impression he has no penis or testicles). The film's biggest problem is not that everything has been done before and done better, or that it's derivative or reminiscent of superior films and novels. The problem is it feels like it's aimed at people who never saw (or read) the Name of the Rose, or even for the action sequences Ronin, the Bourne Identity/Supremacy or like, any Luc Besson film, or tried but found that sort of European nonsense inaccessible. About 10 minutes in I realized this wasn't even the best movie I've seen with Jean Reno and an evil monk (that would be the sequel to Crimson Rivers where the superhuman monk is actually pretty freaky). Who knew you could put Jean Reno, Alfred Molina, Audrey Tatou, Paul Bettany, and Ian McKellen in a Tom Hanks movie and come up with this garbage. (There may still be hope for The Da Vinci Load, though.)