The most controversial thriller of the year turns out to be about as exciting as watching your parents play Sudoku.

"The Da Vinci Code," Ron Howard's adaptation of the best-selling Dan Brown novel, plays it so safe that it actually may be proven to lower pulses; from a pasty, dispassionate Tom Hanks in the role of Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon to a script carefully written to mollify Christians already upset by the film's provocative premise of a Jesus-and-Mary Magdalene hook-up, "The Da Vinci Code" turns out to be a decidedly bland piece of high-grade cheese.

Still, the 40 million-odd readers who gulped down Brown's thriller -- in which a murder leads to troubling revelations about a conspiracy within the Catholic church -- will take pleasure in seeing his talky scavenger hunt reenacted. The novel, after all, needed only a few Fade Ins to qualify as a shooting script. Howard has cut down on a few windy speeches and digressions, but at 2 1/2 hours, what action there is is anything but taut. As Langdon's partner in crime solving, Audrey Tautou's role as brilliant cryptologist Sophie Neveu has been reduced to a leggy, wide-eyed odalisque. Ian McKellen provides some crafty fun as an obsessive Holy Grail expert.

Still, "The Da Vinci Code" never takes flight, remaining largely inert until its climax, perhaps the most risible Big Reveal in cinematic history.

-- Ann Hornaday

Contains disturbing images, violence, nudity, thematic material, brief drug references and sexual content.