Now, tell me: do you think you would have liked the movie as much -- or understood it -- had you not read the book?

I liked the movie, and I thought that Howard did a creditable job making the exposition portions as visually accessible as they needed to be. I do think, though, that anyone who hasn't read the book beforehand is at a possibly fatal disadvantage. Another recent movie, this one for kids, which has this flaw is Holes, based on the book of the same name by Louis Sachar. However, it didn't receive near the flagellation by the critics that The DaVinci Code has received.

How many of those critics who gave the movie bad reviews had read the book, do you suppose?

This book/movie thing becomes more problematic all the time, the more we have of them. I just finished up with a discussion group who did a series of book/film combinations, and let me tell you, the movies that don't resemble the books are not received well at all, but only if the movie and the book are both realistic. Fantasy seems to have a different set of standards.