1st comment for DVD & Cable TV release: If you've invested your 10 bucks already, please skip

Rating: 5/10 (19 May 2009)

Don't be fooled by the first couple hundred comments here; nearly all of them came from people who 1)were involved with the film, 2)are Dan Brown ditto-heads, and\or 3)spent about $10 to see this in a first-run theater and do not want to admit they shelled out so much to see such an insincerely manipulative movie. The purpose of my comment is to help you decide whether to 1)rent this the first week it's out for one night at $2.60, 2)wait until you can rent it for five nights for a buck, 3)wait until you can rent it for five nights, two-for-a-buck, 4)wait until you can see it for no extra charge from your TV provider(s), or 5)skip it altogether. (I will guarantee that those people who choose options #2 through #4--that is, who invest $1 or less in ANGELS & DEMONS, will be unlikely to rate this even as high as I did, at "5" out of 10.)
I watched every excruciating minute of ANGELS & DEMONS' 2:18:27.26 running time (with my better half, on two free passes from the local radio station, for which we waited another hour). Ron Howard (I will NOT blame Dan Brown for this) violated several cardinal rules of movie making: 1)sure, you can have a surprise bad guy, but you CANNOT ASSUME every movie-watcher has read the novel, and stick in the twist nine minutes from closing credits with NO foreshadowing, thereby capriciously negating the hero-building mood you worked so hard to establish for the first two hours of your film, 2)you cannot stuff more wrong-headed incidents of people simultaneously displaying I.Q. disparities of 10 and 200 (that is, people being geniuses at placing themselves as totally secure evil masterminds while at the exact same time lacking even an insect's sense of basic self-preservation) than all seven seasons of the TV show "24" combined, and 3)if you're going to vandalize the characters of your lead actors as well as a good portion of the world's intellectual and art treasures, you cannot do it in such a casual, throw-away manner (unless you're making a farce such as MARS ATTACKS!).