Daily Variety: "Verbose...Inadequate...Lurid"

Daily Variety pretty much slams The Da Vinci Code here.

Here are snips...

Sitting through all the verbose explanations and speculations about symbols, codes, secret cults, religious history and covert messages in art, it is impossible to believe that, had the novel never existed, such a script would ever have been considered by a Hollywood studio. It's esoteric, heady stuff, made compelling only by the fact that what it's proposing undermines the fundamental tenants of Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, and, by extension, Western Civilization for the past 2,000 years.

The irony in the film's inadequacy is that the novel was widely found to be so cinematic. Although pretty dismal as prose, the tome fairly rips along courtesy of a strong story hook, very short chapters that seem like movie scenes, constant movement by the principal characters in a series of conveyances, periodic eruptions of violent action and a compressed 24-hour time frame.

The appearance of its easy adaptability may have been deceptive, however, as what went down easily on the page becomes laborious onscreen...

What one is left with is high-minded lurid material sucked dry by a desperately solemn approach....

Part of the quick deflation is due to a palpable lack of chemistry between Hanks and Tautou, an odd thing in itself given their genial accessibility in many previous roles. Howard, normally a generous director of actors, makes them both look stiff, pasty and inexpressive here in material that provides them little opportunity to express basic human nature... It's a film so overloaded with plot that there's no room for anything else, from emotion to stylistic grace notes.