Sloppy, Silly, Gory, Ugly, Incomprehensible, Unbelievable, Hateful

Rating: 3/10 (15 June 2009)

"Angels and Demons" is a sloppy, silly, stupidly gory and violent, badly cast, wrongly conceived, transparent, often incomprehensible, awkwardly plotted, hateful movie that doesn't even offer the fabulous travelogue of Rome's artistic treasures that one had every right to hope for.
I went to see "Angels and Demons" because I thought it might be fun to see a movie that uses Rome's most fabulous artistic treasures in a gripping, brain-teasing, puzzler of a plot. Ron Howard undermines the movie by filming glorious artworks, Bernini's "St. Teresa," for example, as if they were graffiti-covered sidewalks in a hip hop video. Howard uses hand-held cameras, murky lighting, and jumpy, quick cuts and you never really get to experience St. Peter's Square, the Sistine Chapel, or Rome's fountains, all of which serve as backgrounds for the film.
Tom Hanks used to be an actor I respected. Here he is scraping bottom. He looks old, baggy, and lumpy, and he isn't suited to play the intellectual-James-Bond, international sleuth in a fantasy thriller.
The plot is a mishmash of the incomprehensible and the impossible. There are several unnecessary, gory, sadistic scenes I wish I had never seen. The villain will be obvious to anyone who's ever seen a movie and has a three digit IQ. The movie might have been fun camp; Howard makes the mistake of treating it seriously.
It's no good for Howard, Hanks, and Dan Brown to protest that they don't hate Catholicism, for "Angels and Demons" is a profoundly hateful film that lies deeply and repeatedly in its depiction of Catholics and Catholicism as a cabal of malevolent conspirators. It's frequently pointed out and absolutely true that no contemporary, mainstream Hollywood film would ever depict members of faiths other than Christianity in such an ugly, bigoted way.