Da Vinci Code is no cracker

We all know that The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown's popcorn novel about weird signs, wonderful conspiracies and a hunt for buried treasure, has been an unparalleled publishing phenomenon. Can Ron Howard's lumbering, po-faced adaptation of this mumbo-jumbo match its success? Perhaps, but it certainly failed the taste test in Cannes. Critics queued for more than an hour to get into a film that, as everyone grumbled, was obviously too long at 148 minutes. Cannes critics have little time for anything over the 100-minute mark. Even so, the sprinkling of titters that added sparkle to the second half of the film was more derisory than usual. [More]