"Uninteresting." That's the word that kept springing to mind while I watched The DaVinci Code. Other words sprang, too: rote, flat, contrived, Contact.
Carl Sagan's novel Contact will forever be my measuring stick for unentertaining entertainments. I slogged through most of its length and, with a scant 30 pages remaining, abruptly decided that nothing could possibly redeem the book in so short of time. So I quit.
I had several such moments during DaVinci, but I went against my better judgement and remained in my seat. The first such twinge was when Tom Hanks' character is said to be a Harvard "Professor of Symbolology." Unfortunately, the story only got dumber from there. The film is a seemingly endless, neuron-decayingly dull conversation about random contrivances, punctuated by the occasional car chase. The conversation is about the big scavenger hunt our heroes undertake. Clues are typically unraveled with scintillating deductions like this:
Him: "A NIECE PETE SLUT?" Who's Pete?Her: I don't know. It doesn't make sense.
Him: Wait! Of course! It's an anagram! Look! "PETUNIA CELESTE!"
Her: Of course! The root of "Celeste" means "heavenly" in French. But what do the French have to do with anything?
Him: Whoa. Petunias were Charles de Gaulle's niece's favorite flower. His niece. So if we go to his crypt and look on the ceiling—at the heavens—we're certain to find the next utterly fucking random clue. To the car!
I made that up, but it would blend into the script. Seamlessly.