How Bad Is The Da Vinci Code Movie Going To Be? You Tell Me...

My good people, we will soon have the esteemed honor of seeing what will no doubt be - one of the worst movies ever made. You can quote me on that when Dan Brown's über popular book hits the big screen this summer. I know it's going to make a boat load of money, and I know everyone on the planet is going to see it, but it is going to suck. Big bestseller style.

You may be asking yourself, "Wait a minute, but...the book was written like a screen play. How on earth can it be bad?" Believe me it will be bad. It has all the right ingredients to be bad. It may in fact have an extra helping of most of those ingredients. I'll go through some of them:

1. It is based in Europe but centers around an American who seemingly doesn't know a lot about Europe and has to keep making remarks to reiterate that fact. Never a good thing.

2. Smugness. Tons of know-it-all smugness. Which will no doubt be translated onto the big screen as annoying.

3. Evil guys that are almost too evil. About as believable as James Bond villains without the entertainment value.

4. A very familiar story. What do you do when your entire audience already knows what's going to happen? Why you change things of course. What happens when you try to add to a storyline? You mess it up.

5. Too many well known actors, Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, and the only two French actors besides Gérard Depardieu that most people know, Audrey Tautou and Jean Reno. You know it can't work. It never works.

6. An inevitable amount of slow-motion pans that will make the movie amazingly slow.

7. Way, way, way too many coincidences, which will have to be played off as "just plain unbelievable" in the filmed version.

8. The touchy subject of religion, which will no doubt have to be dealt with. And most likely dealt with in a disastrous way.

9. Too many car chases and escape scenes. Looks good on paper. Looks bad on big screen.

10. An ending that is even beyond Hollywood to come up with. I will have to leave the cinema 10 minutes early to avoid it.

11. Hype, hype, hype. More hype. A bit of hype. And then some hype. Book to movie hype....usshhh.

12. Voiceovers and flash back sequences galore. Momentum killing scenes will abound.

13. It has to appeal to "the widest possible audience". Because, the book certainly did.

14. The dialogue.

15. Did I mention the fact that the book is not good? It's not. Bad book = Worse movie.

Well, there's my opinion and here's Salman Rushdie's opinion, "Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name. Even Dan Brown must live. Preferably not write, but live." But, you tell me, why is this movie going to be terrible? Or better yet, tell me why it isn't going to be terrible.

K. Panda

The Da Vinci Code opens in theaters worldwide in May. You can see the trailer here. Don't say I didn't warn you.