Swing and a miss

Rating: 6/10 (1 June 2009)

I should have known you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Religion, science, worlds end, moment of creation, ancient secret societies... Ron Howard stays faithful to his cues, but ultimately the downfall of this movie lies solely in plot and writing. Today, audiences can suspend disbelief if they go into a theater with such intention, but that was the magic behind The Da Vinci Code, wasn't it? We walked out of the theater with a sense of "what if?" despite having been ready for a movie that was supposed to be unbelievable. Angels and Demons fails on this note because the plot is childish and absurd, in no way a justice to its paperback counterpart. It seemed rushed, despite being too long, and many a minute were wasted on meaningless dialog that could have otherwise been used to develop characters whose interactions were arbitrary, to say the least. There is, though ill-fated, an attempt made for a Langdon/Sophie relationship here... which in itself was just pathetically copycat material. And to make matters worse, characters who exist long enough and seem to finally be taking a decisive role suddenly are either killed or shooed away for more haywire plot development. And when I say haywire, I mean insanely over-the-top ridiculousness. It's sporadic and even a bit desperate to capture the essence its predecessor left behind, and in the end it just doesn't compare. Wait for the DVD folks.