it's not something to get excited about either way

Rating: 5/10 (16 May 2009)

Angels and Demons follows on the heels of The Da Vinci Code as being what that movie was: something to not really be too excited about either way. In this case the MacGuffin leading the characters on their silly adventure (and yes, make no mistake, this is silliness disguised as pompous seriousness) is not Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary or the fallacy in that, but it's a, well, anti-matter cube that will blow up the Vatican City. But it's a MacGuffin that is not used in a way that Hitchcock was so clever about; it's meant to be used as an ideal of science vs. religion, that the Illuminatti are at war with the Catholic Church and are going to use this piece of science and blah blah, whatever. To put it mildly, a MacGuffin like anti-matter would be fine to use if it weren't for the characters and story, which are transparent.
Not to go on too much about anti-matter. What should be at focus in this review is something very simple: Angels and Demons is not very exciting as a thriller or a drama, and its twists and turns happen so rapidly, and with so much exposition, you'd swear that the screenwriters were trying to out-exposition Law & Order. Indeed, I wouldn't even blame Dan Brown for the dull jerkiness of the plot, as (having not read the book) I can assume the original text might have been fun if only in that way that Airplane paperback books move along with pieces of food for thought (also, indeed, there's a consensus that Angels and Demons is the *better* book than Da Vinci Code even if it's less controversial). But with cinema, it's something else, and every five minutes we get a "wait, it's at the chapel" or "Wait, no, it's at the church, give me a map!" or "No, that's not it, it's in the sewer" or "Wait, it's in my hat!"
It's a constant string of gotchas that aren't guided by a very suspenseful hand but by a slick Hollywood filmmaker, Ron Howard, who has made some very good movies in his day (Frost/Nixon, Beautiful Mind) and even with his star Tom Hanks (Apollo 13). He's slightly out of his element as he, frankly, hacks his way through the thicket of plot points and explanation with only occasional moments that are striking (i.e. Hanks knocking a book-case against one of those glass windows that's oh-so ever hard to break while losing oxygen in the Vatican archives). And ultimately, I didn't really get out of it what Dan Brown may have wanted me to see, which is the thought-provoking sense of looking at religion and Catholicism and seeing the hypocrisies underneath, OR that science rules and that secretly it wouldn't be a bad thing to let people see that science and academia rules over superstitions that have lasted Millenia too long.
Ultimately, it's already leaving my mind for the most part what happened that was "message" like or that which was really compelling. It's just another well-oiled but rickety blockbuster machine that will really only please hardcore fans of the book - or those looking for Tom Hanks as a know-it-all superhero.