The Da Vinci Code

I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but I thought this was entertaining:

"To their credit the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on Cinderella Man and A Beautiful Mind, have streamlined Mr. Brown's story and refrained from trying to capture his, um, prose style. 'Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair.' Such language — note the exquisite 'almost' and the fastidious tucking of the 'which' after the preposition — can live only on the page."

"But thank the deity of your choice for Ian McKellen, who shows up just in time to give "The Da Vinci Code" a jolt of mischievous life. He plays a wealthy and eccentric British scholar named Leigh Teabing. (I will give Mr. Brown this much: he's good at names. If I ever have twins or French poodles, I'm calling them Bezu and Teabing for sure.)"

Read the full review at http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/movies/18code.html?8dpc.