The Text, Vic ! ! ! Don't Say The Text ! ! !

Rating: 4/10 (30 May 2009)

Monty Python used to do a comedy sketch in the 1970's called "The Bishop", in which a crime-fighting clergyman would try to foil the pernicious plots and dastardly deeds of various criminal masterminds. The joke was that "The Bishop" would always arrive ten seconds too late to save the victim and would then hilariously lament, "We was . . . too late."
If you've seen that skit, then you've seen this movie. Super-Hero Symbologist (now there's a phrase you don't hear every day) Robert Langdon is pulled into a bizarro plot involving antimatter, flaming monks, and a centuries old cult trying to wipe out the Catholic Church. Langon spends the entire movie zooming around Vatican City in various sports-cars, helicopters, and police caravans only to see his mysterious shadowy foe emerge victorious time and time again because he was . . . too late.
Not a horrible movie to be sure, but we have come to expect far more from people as gifted as Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. The film wants badly to evoke some of the grand mystery, horror and excitement of the earlier Hanks/Howard effort "The DaVinci Code", but for this movie, it was . . . too late.