Nikolai revisits 'The Da Vinci Code,' with the benefit of knowing what he is talking about.

Last week, my editor made me write a review on The Da Vinci Code, which can be read elsewhere in this e-zine. (I can't be bothered doing a link, so go find it yourself, lazy bastards!)

I hadn't actually watched the movie when I wrote that review, and did not intend to watch it in the future. I pieced the review together out of a mish-mash of previews and things people told me...

Anyway, my point is, I actually saw the movie last night (because someone gave me free tickets) so now I feel the need to comment on it from a position of knowledge.

And frankly, even though I got in for free, I feel cheated. I was more entertained when the mobile phone of the guy behind started ringing and he started telling whoever had rung him that he was in a movie and couldn't speak right then.

Unfortunately the phone conversation ended all too soon and I had to return to watching the film.

I must assume the book was better, because I've been told it's a number one best seller, and while the world is full of imbeciles, surely there aren't that many people smart enough to actually read that would enjoy the utter pap contained in the movie.

It's all a riddle to me

Nothing made sense. Why were they driving fast all the time? Why were people trying to kill them, only to be foiled by incredible flukes of chance, and then a few minutes later suddenly be explaining to them how they need them alive to serve some diabolical plan that made no sense even when they tried to explain it?

Why was the main female character the Holy Grail because she was the last heir of Jesus Christ, and the whole plot revolved around this point, but moments after they revealed this, her entire family (which seemed to number fifty at least) turned up and said hello? Surely if they are family, then they are heirs also. And why did they wait until the end of the movie to introduce themselves? Have they not heard of telephones?

And why did the man at the beginning, after being shot in the stomach, spend so long writing weird codes and messages in invisible ink and blood all over the Louvre? Considering it would have taken hours to do, wouldn't it have been better to get to a phone and ring an ambulance and perhaps the police? Or perhaps he could have simply alerted one of the many security guards shown standing around the museum in the early scenes?

But the ultimate question I kept asking myself was, why will it not end?

Whenever it seemed to be coming to its final silly conlusion and I breathed a sigh of relief, a sudden plot twist would extend it for another indefinite period.

Eventually, as Tom Hanks' character set off on some new mission, I could take no more and I clambered up the cinema back wall, throttled the projectionist, smashed the projection machine and burned down the cinema.

As such, I write this from my local insane asylum, which they tell me will be my home for some while now. The food is a little dull, the walls are too white and the electrodes they strap to my genitals can be painful; but it was worth it.

Editor's note: Since the state is now providing lodging and food for Nikolai, I no longer have any qualms about halving his salary.