Da Vinci Code. Pffft.

By Leila Marie Lawler ( articles ) | May 17, 2006

I read the Da Vinci Code and all I can say is that I will be vexed if all the protests result in big profits for what promises to be a movie equal in stupidity only to the book. Truly, folks, the laughable level of pinchbeck scholarship and utterly abysmal prose in this book, not to mention the amazing lack of any kind of plot, make the charge of blasphemy seem just injudicious on the part of those who level it.

I’m not questioning anyone’s love for our Lord or desire to protect His honor; I’m just sincerely asking them if they should really bother. The book, and, it seems, the movie, can be more handily condemned on the simple grounds of offending against any kind of sense at all.

And is it too much to ask that a thriller contain an actual thrilling reason to justify reading it? If the darn chalice thing that the remarkably dreary characters are searching for was buried under the silly pyramid in the Louvre to start with, why go through all that nonsense to find it? (Oops, I didn't spoil it for you, did I?)

And by that I mean why should we, the readers, bother; not why should they, the characters. To hell with them, and I mean literary hell, not the other kind, of which they are not worthy.

Anyway, I’m delighted to read this trenchant and genuinely amusing review of the movie in today’s New York Times. I never thought I’d say that.