Almost as bad as Independence Day

Rating: 1/10 (13 July 2009)

The implausibility of the plot has been noted by several commentators, particularly the immense amount of trouble Fr McKenna would have had to have gone to, and the sheer impossibility of some of the calculations he would have had to have made, including that Langdon was going to decipher each clue in minutes. McKenna is branded; a few seconds later he is giving orders, and a few minutes later, he is running (literally) around in charge of operations -- in real life, he would be in shock. And, as usual in thrillers, the assassin doesn't kill the heroes, giving as his only lame explanation that they were not on the list of those to be killed, as though every other innocent bystander he shot was. I have always used Independence Day as the hallmark of a truly awful film (US President commandeers jet plane and beats off aliens, ha ha), and this effort runs it close. For such an implausible film, Angels and Demons contains a remarkable number of predictable incidents. Who didn't laugh knowingly when the assassin went to get his reward in the Volkswagen? I felt like shouting, "You are going to be blown up". Who didn't know that the heroine was going to find a body in the lab? Who didn't spot the baddie? Technically also, the film was awful. The dialogue was more often indecipherable than clear, while the races across Rome to the next church were accompanied by deafening music. Moreover, many scenes looked like mud. The one redeeming feature was the shots of Rome and what looked like the Vatican -- an achievement, because I am sure that the Vatican officials would not have wanted this dross shot in and around St Peter's -- and the interiors were convincing. Rome is a magic place, and I enjoyed seeing it fleetingly.