People just adore controversies, but when the same arguments are recycled over and over again, it all becomes just pompous pulp.

The movie version of Dan Brown's mega-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" fails not because of Ron Howard's directing, nor Tom Hanks or Audrey Tautou's acting.

It fails because there's just too much material spinning around in this otherwise beautiful tale. The story ends up a mess. There's no clarity, no purity left in the art.

Thai viewers watched the debut on Wednesday night, mere hours after duelling censor boards ended the battle of the alleged 10-minute affront to Christianity. The authorities decided here and in South Korea and India and even at the Vatican that the movie is a work of fiction, and that everyone already knows that.

"Code" the book had already escaped charges of plagiarism before Christian fundamentalists tried to stop the film. By the time it was over, the story seemed more corrupt than appealing. When a film appears amid commercialism and controversy, it's no longer a work of art - it's a fraud.

And the fakery continues into the body of the movie too. Tom Hanks isn't the Robert Langdon of the novel but a twisted version. On the page Langdon is the professor who has his students swooning. On film, quite apart from his claustrophobia, he's barely breathing. I kept wishing throughout the long two and half hours that he'd at least flash his Mickey Mouse watch.

Tautou, as well, fails to embody the curious and smart cryptologist Sophie of the book. Typical of women in movies, she's dependent and helpless.

"Code" tries hard not to offend anyone, which automatically saps all the power from the novel. Once Langdon and Sophie meet, the story becomes grindingly slow and redundant with its analyses of the symbols and clues by which Sophie's slain grandfather (Jean-Pierre Marielle) hoped they would find the Holy Grail.

To the viewer's immense relief, actual entertainment arrives in the form of Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen). He's a wonderful mixture of evil and good, though he still seems cliche, a throwback to "Lord of the Rings".

Silas (Paul Bettany), who was one of the most intriguing characters in the book, one that could have made the movie more interesting, hardly speaks a word between furiously lashing himself and committing murder.

Perhaps "The Da Vinci Code" is trying to say everyone is merely human. In a scene reminiscent of Howard's "A Beautiful Mind", Hanks struggles to decipher the cryptex cube as 3D images dance in his head. In the end, he gives up. "I don't know," he says.

That's pretty much what most viewers will say when the credits roll.

This isn't the Hollywood blockbuster we'd been hoping for, but Ron Howard is to be applauded for taking a risk, even a subtle one, in trying to bring to the screen an international best-seller of such intricacy.