hahaha

Actually, that was covered in the book. English was used because it was anti-Roman Catholic. In other words, the thought was that Latin-based Roman Catholics would not be able to read English. Or some such.

I saw The DaVinci Code yesterday too. I couldn't get over how every single time the hero and heroine were about to be killed, something distracted whoever had the gun at the very last possible second. Every. Single. Time.

I also laughed out loud at how quickly Robert Langdon was able to decipher every single puzzle or encrypted message or code.

Good books often make terrible movies and vice-versa. I liked the book; there's something to the slow unfolding of the puzzle, being able to go back and review the clues and all that. In a two hour movie, you don't see any of that development; it's just the finished product.

It's kind of like those cooking shows: You look at a recipe and realize it takes three hours to prepare the dish, but Julia Child or Graham Kerr could whip it up in about 30 minutes; no muss, no fuss. It just doesn't capture the essence of the recipe, though.

I enjoyed the book -- page-turner, great read -- but there were some really facile things. Like, in the very first few chapters, how the French government's supposed expert cryptographer was completely stymied by an anagram of "LEONARDO DA VINCI'S THE MONA LISA".

"Do you have an eidetic memory?" Sophie asked. "No, but I can usually remember everything I see," Landgon responded.

"It's word, but the letters are jumbled up," Langdon said. "An anagram," Sophie replied.

Thank you, The Da Vinci Code, for explaining those things to me. As for the book, I hated hated hated that every chapter had to be a cliffhanger of some sort. Every single one, except the last one. It was like reading an episode of CSI: Miami.

.was how the message on the shiny-new brass medallion embedded in in the rose box AND the crisp, clean parchment inside the cryptex (or whatever it was called) were BOTH written in modern English. Not Latin, not French, not even in rudimentary code.

haven't seen the movie, but I admit, I loved the book.
The reason is because her grandfather made the box, the cryptex, and the parchment so she could find the secret if anything happened to him. It wasn't an ancient relic.
It was in English because he intended it for her, and the two of them always spoke English together.

I haven't seen the movie so I don't know if it's the same, but I would guess so.

on preview: I like CSI, too. :)

Totally hated the book, but I couldn't put it down. Which made it even worse.

I loathed the book, I thought it was badly written and didn't get more than 100 pages in. I'd read "The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail" when it came out 20 years ago, so knew the basic premise of the story.

After what people have said, I won't pay good money to see the film but will probably end up being a captive audience for it on a transatlantic flight when I've watched all the other movies.

What I thought was the most hilarious was how badly Tom Hanks acted in this movie. The book was awful.

I still stand by my previous comments. I liked it. Far from original, but it moved fast for me, and 'grabbed' me.

And, perhaps, surprisingly, I consider myself to be somewhat sophisticated as a movie goer.

Good books often make terrible movies and vice-versa.

True, but that isn't the case in this situation.

It's not so much that the story was bad ... but, ye gods, the author has excrutiatingly little talent for writing. Not the sort of book that makes you sit back and exclaim "Wow! Can this guy write!" Not the sort of writing that you'd want to, you know, emulate yourself if you have dreams of becoming an author.

The book was mildly entertaining and very easy to read, and the premise and story were amusing enough... but it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, what one would wish to call a "good" book. It was just a book. An ordinary, maybe even substandard, bit of writing. The kind of writing that would normally languish on the not-a-best-seller lists.

Having heard the movie is excreable, I'll be certain to avoid it like the bird flu.