magine an action adventure where the hero says, "I have to get to a library. Fast!" …or "When you were a child, do you remember any ritualistic gatherings?" Well, that’d be The Da Vinci Code, the big-screen version of the best-selling book. Like the book, this is an oddly constructed murder mystery where the hero uncovers proof that Jesus had wed Mary Magdalene and fathered a child whose descendants survive to this very day.

However dubious, the novel has been such a hot item that Hollywood had no choice but to treat the film adaptation as a major blockbuster event. And for this 153-minute version, directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), there's no pretending it lives up to expectations. And then there’s two-time best actor winner Tom Hanks, with his weird mullet haircut, who has never been duller.

In terms of story, the film is too much like the novel, a mechanized affair that relies almost exclusively on plot and gives characters little development. Hanks is Harvard symbols expert Robert Langdon. He's doing a book signing in Paris when he's called to the Louvre. He's brought in for questions involving the death of a respected curator at the Louvre who, in his dying moments, has managed to leave behind a cryptic message that's somehow tied to ... yep, Leonardo da Vinci! Langdon is immediately a suspect. Before he can be arrested, he is spirited away by police cryptologist Sophie Neveu Tautou, a police cryptologist who is also the murdered man's granddaughter. She convinces Langdon to join her in evading the police in a search for who really murdered her estranged grandfather.

The murder is part of a plot on the part of some members of the Catholic Church to cover up a fact that would change all Christian belief: That Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene; that she was pregnant by him when he was crucified, and that she fled to France and had his child. Langdon and Sophie end up chasing after the Grail (which would actually be Mary Magdalene's tomb) assumedly in order to keep the bad guys from covering up the fact that it, and the offspring existed.