about the Da Vinci movie....

"Here's the PJ..." said my cousin, "What do they call the movie Da Vinci Code in Punjab?"
What the hell? One does not rename a movie just for the sake of one state.
"Whatz it?" I blurted out. It was a boring Saturday evening, and my mind goes into a coma after Friday 5pm. It almost takes the effort of reincarnation, to get back to normal on Monday morning.
Due to all these grave reasons, I refused to let any blood flow amidst the grey matter inside my skull.
"Vinci Da Code," he said aloud, followed by a set of guffaws.
"Heh heh," I smirked.

One Saturday evening found me and my two cousins at the Symphony theatre for the movie 'Da Vinci Code'. And that is where the tragedy began. Devoid of all the hot women that one can find at these cinema halls, the crowd resembled nothing less than a gay club, with chest thumping men in tights and lean men, seemingly unfed as from Nigeria.
"Where are all the babes, ma'an?" I asked my cousin, who had been one of the patrons of the theatre.
"They are all at the PVRs," he shrugged.
"##@$%&*@###@$%&&," I said. (Beeped out due to censorship).
"Then what are we doing here?" I added, more politely, by the previous standard.
"We have come to watch the movie," the other cousin added. "Yeah rite!!! Letz stick to watching the movie then", I uttered sarcastically.
.
The movie began with an old man in a dark suit running for life in a dark building, in France. He ran, ran and ran. He ran like one of those stinking rich, pot bellied men on the tread mill, who suddenly get a call from their gorgeous cousins on the day of the murder. (True!!! I have been watching a lot of murder mysteries). He runs through all those dark halls, dark corridors and darker rooms.
What the hell was happening???? I thought it was only Bangalore that had power cuts all the time.
Suddenly, like a comedian, Silas appears out of nowhere, and shoots the fat man down.
Thankfully!!!
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), an academic in the US, (where there is plenty of electricity, so much so that all the scenes are well lit! and so Tom Hanks is visible) is invited to France as a part of inquiry by the French police. And there again, he enters the dark zone, and for the next half hour, you hear a lot of dialogues which remain unchanged from the book (believe me, the dialogues resemble the book, WORD TO WORD!!!). You can as well take the book to the theatre, and play the game of checking the same. In the book, a lot of reader's imagination is involved.
Well, it is the same with the movie. You will have to use a lot of your imagination, as what is visible is almost next to nothing, due to all the darkness.
Finally, there is some relief when 'Robert Langdon enters the bank' scene, after an hour.
The scenes are well lit and one can start concentrating on the proceedings rather than scream at the projector controller to increase the brightness, as he bangs his head on the walls unable to do it more than the limit.
And then there is the most awaited part of the movie.
THE INTERVAL!!!

"What has Da Vinci got to do in this movie?" my cousin, who has not read the book, asked. Ask the director ma'an. That moron was supposed to explain the stuff to you.
Well, if you have not read the book, please invest the ticket money in the stock market. It is in a pretty bad shape now, and someday when it picks up, you will thank me for the tip. :D
I had to explain the first half the story in the available five minutes.

The second half went according to the novel, the director not attempting to show anything different from what you would have got from reading the novel. By the time the movie climaxes, you are tired of the term Holy Grail. You are tired of watching the Robert Langdon getting tensed about everything in life. You are tired of watching a bad looking heroine, who partly resembles Bugs Bunny (no surprise that Langdon doesn't smile anywhere in the movie).

If you have read the novel, better stick to your imagination, which certainly is better than Ron Howard's.
If you have not read the novel, and want to watch it out of vengeance, to later say 'Oh! Da Vinci Code.... I know about that!!!’ forget about it. You will have to run to a Da Vinci Code literate to decipher the movie, a bigger mystery than the murder in the movie.

Yeah. The 'Vinci Da Code' joke was better.