Being one of the few people who haven’t read Dan Brown’s strastopherically popular -- and controversial -- novel The Da Vinci Code, I waded out Ron Howard’s film adaptation relatively cold. Like a National Treasure minus the Indiana Jones-inspired heroics, Nicolas Cage and daylight, the film doesn’t really deserve all the heat it’s been courting. Any sane movie-goer will immediately recognise the preposterous nature of the enterprise. Tom Hanks is at his most colourless and least challenging here, as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon who’s called into help French cop Bezu Fache (Jean Reno) when the curator of the Lourve is found brutally murdered. There’s absolutely zero spark between him and Audrey Tatou’s police cryptologist. The Da Vinci Code’s speculative narrative offers minor whodunnit pleasures -- it’s certainly the most intriguing aspect of what is a decidedly inoffensive, unintentionally amusing slab of religious treasure hunting. It plods through genre conventions --- the-wrong-man-on-the-run, foggy conspiracies, geography-hopping action, whiplash twists -- with stifling solemnity. Ian McKellen, clearly savouring his role as Holy Grail expert Leigh Teabing, adds some late-reel buoyancy to the largely grave atmosphere.