Why such a stir over 'Da Vinci?'

Film critics, can't live with them . . .

Amid more negativism than President Bush's latest approval rating, the much anticipated release of "The Da Vinci Code" occurred this past weekend. Critics from coast to coast panned the movie, and not just the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast, but also the Mediterranean coast, the South China Sea coast, the Indian Ocean coast and the North Sea coast.

Film critics said the movie was dull, slow and predictable. Religious critics said the movie was sacrilegious, blasphemous and heretical. Historical critics complained about the facts. Fashion critics complained about Tom Hanks' hair.

Like multimillions of others who had read the book, I went to see the movie on opening weekend anyway.

I thought it was very good.

That's code for three and three-quarter stars.

My biggest complaint? The usual. Not enough butter in the buttered popcorn.

Tom Hanks was, typically, brilliant. His performance was heaven-sent. How you can play a better Harvard symbologist is beyond me.

The plot — basically that the billion-member Catholic Church is founded on a lie — is simplified in the movie, making it easier to understand than in the book that has sold, so far, 60.5 million copies, including the one I bought and read in 2004.

That's a lot of books, easily surpassing the 28 million copies sold of "Gone With the Wind," the previous all-time fiction bestseller.

But in sales of all books, fiction and non-fiction, it's still a long ways behind "The Bible," with an estimated 6 billion copies sold, and counting.

The irony is that if the conspiracy alleged in the "The Da Vinci Code" is true, it would also make "The Bible" a book of fiction, knocking "The Da Vinci Code" out of first place.

What I find amazing — even more amazing than all the bad reviews — are the huge numbers of people who aren't treating "The Da Vinci Code" as a work of fiction.

While it's true that the premise is an affront to traditional Christianity and traditional Christian organizations, it isn't exactly the first time real persons, places and things have been used as props to tell a made-up story. As searches for the Holy Grail go, this one isn't any more authentic than Indiana Jones.

Then again, the subject is religion and nothing makes people quicker to take offense.