PARIS, FRANCE- As the long-awaited film adaptation of Dan Brown's mega-selling religious thriller The DaVinci Code prepares for a full bore assault on America's multiplex screens this Friday, curious fans wait in breathless anticipation for the answer to the most vexing riddle of the book: will the movie live up to their expectations. The short answer, according to those lucky enough to catch one of the recent test screenings, is no. Unlike the tome of the same name, the big screen version of The DaVinci Code is somewhat coherent and preserves only a smattering of the moronic expository dialogue that made the original so special.

Rather than worrying about protests from the Catholic church, producers now appear to have a bigger problem on their hands: Dan Brown fans. With its the page-long chapters and repetitive explanations The DaVinci Code captivated readers and broke literary boundaries. Part of the book's charm is that it read like the product of an eighth grade creative writing class, an endearing quality that appears to have vanished along the gold-paved road to Hollywood.

With that in mind, what director Ron Howard has done to their beloved book is unconscionable.

"I paid my eight bucks for a verbatim text-to-film copy of the book," said avid fan Guy Labelle. "What I saw on screen wasn't faithful to Brown's vision at all. The scenes don't repeat endlessly, the puzzles are much less child-like, and almost all the comfortable cliches had been stripped away. After a while, I began to wonder, had Ron Howard even read The DaVinci Code?"

As it turns out, Howard reluctantly admits that he remains one of only six people in the United States not to have read the book. The other five say they were turned off by the book's heretical speculations, but Howard's reasons were far simpler.

"Most people don't realize that I get unsolicited amateur material in the mail every single day," explained Howard. "I'm stalked by the most headache-inducing prose you can imagine: puffed-up mannequins talking through a story rather than showing it; hodgepodges of archetypes taken from a dozen other authors. I can't bring myself to read that crap, either."

The acting, say fans, is the most egregious aspect of this near-criminal adaptation. Acclaimed actor Tom Hanks fails miserably in his attempt to bring Brown's paper-thin characterizations to the screen. Instead, Hanks and costar Audrey Tautou attempt to add life and dimension to their roles resulting in a completely unrecognizable viewing experience.

"I came to the theater expecting to see the DaVinci Code," said Labelle. "I wanted a nonsensical scavenger hunt through exotic locations with an ending that invalidates everything the preceded it, but this isn't that at all. I'm a little scared."

Some SONY studio executives had worried over Hanks' decision to grow his hair out into a bizarre topiary shape prior to filming, but oddly enough this is the one detail fans appreciate.

"The quasi-mullet is perfectly in keeping with Dan's original vision," said Howard. "You can't take your eyes off the thing. It's magnificent. In a way it's a sweet tribute to the Dan Brown fan, a discerning intellectual who purchases all their reading material at Wal-Mart."

As one might expect, most people blame the punched-up script for The DaVinci Code's creative shortcomings. Fans had wanted to see Brown pen the screenplay, but producers said the half dozen scrawl-covered sheets of bathroom tissue he turned in were not as helpful as they had hoped. To be fair, Brown's poor performance came during a particularly rough time in his life, having lost his special "writing helmet" that helps keep him from swallowing his tongue or drooling too much on his keyboard.

Sources say he has since recovered the device and now enjoys long afternoons sipping applesauce through a straw and writing popular fiction.

Howard says that he tried to fix the film's problems in a series of re-shoots last fall, but even after reworking the dialogue with the help of one of the writers from Speed Racer, the scenes failed to bore, annoy, or confuse.

"In the end you give it your all and hope people like it," said Howard. "I tried my best to match the quality of the book, and it looks like I missed the mark. Oh, well. Maybe they'll give Uwe Boll a shot at the sequel."

On the bright side, there will be plenty of other chances for Hollywood to do right by Brown's fans. According to the author's agent, everything the man has ever excreted onto paper has been optioned for theatrical release, including a paper on pill bugs he wrote in third grade ans a highly-praised coffee stain from 2002.