Promising But Flawed; An Overstuffed Disappointment With an Understated Knack for Nifty Riddles

Rating: 6/10 (29 October 2014)

A big-budget, big-name, big-screen adaptation of one of the decade's biggest literary phenomenons. Given such gravitas, it shouldn't be surprising that the whole thing frequently threatens to buckle under the weight of its own expectations. And threaten it does, in typical bloated, self-indulgent fashion, but like a Weeble it's able to sustain such wobbles intact. The intense, brainy series of puzzles and mysteries at its heart are largely to thank for that - though the figurines dancing around their outskirts are persistently fake and irritating, there's something deeply interesting about the riddles themselves that's able to power the film instead. The plot comes and goes as it pleases. Ian McKellan gets to deliver all the sizzle, in a profoundly thought-provoking monologue on the roots of Christianity, then abruptly changes his tune in one of an endless series of stupid, unnecessary swerves. In that sense, it feels like a film that thinks it needs to do more than it does. Tom Hanks, thrust into an unfamiliar role as a thriller/action lead, never feels completely at-home, and Audrey Tautou (best known from her work in Amelie) is flat and unconvincing, a major disappointment as his co-star. There's the sparkle of something powerful glimmering at the heart of The Da Vinci Code, but actually unearthing it amidst so much padding and space-filler is a task on par with one of the film's most difficult brain teasers.