Rain, Rain Go Away… Oh wait, I live in London.

The Da Vinci Code Movie- Are you kidding me?

How can you make such a dull and lifeless movie from such an intriguing and entertaining book? I know most movies adapted from books aren't nearly as good as the original book, but somehow adaptations of the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series have managed to remain true to the books without losing any of the excitement inherent in their pages. Not so with Da Vinci. With the all-star cast and Ron Howard as director it's quite hard to grasp how this movie fell so short.

It started promisingly enough with the grisly murder of the Grandmaster of the Priory and immediate involvement of Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou) in the case. However, it quite quickly became rather cliched and somewhat slow-paced. There was pretty much no chemistry between Hanks and Tatou and Hanks seemed very mechanical, almost uncomfortable, in his role. The only saving graces of this drawn-out, seemingly interminable affair were the amazing soundtrack and British actors Ian McKellen and Paul Bettany as, respectively, Sir Leigh Teabing (a Grail expert) and Silas (an albino Opus Dei monk).

Christians shouldn't be worrying about the supposed anti-Christian message of this movie- no one will be awake long enough to be influenced about the supposed cover-up of Jesus and Mary Magdalene's child by the Catholic Church.

Despite being distinctly underwhelmed, it's one of those movies I'm glad I saw anyway because everyone is going to be talking about it for weeks to come. At least now I can make knowledgeably snarky comments about this two and a half hour monstrosity.