The Best Comedy of the Year 2009!!!

Rating: 5/10 (17 May 2009)

What a brilliant comedy full of ridiculous juxtaposition, and showcasing, in the style of The Princess Bride, that a really bad book can make a really funny movie by never building up any suspension of disbelief whatsoever. The soundtrack by Hans Zimmer(True Romance) holds together scenes made entirely of unopposed magnets, the sheer cinematography and performances generally come across brilliantly. Though, overall, the story is terrible the cinematography manages, and at times it seems impossible, to maintain the movie's watchability over two and-a-half hours and captivate us all for a fun time.
This is such a fun and funny movie, and the ending is brilliant!
BRAVO, Ron Howard and crew!
SPOILERS!!!
Scientists are working in a lab at CERN; but the lab, rather than being on the surface, is located about ten feet from the ATLAS computer, which is actually hundreds of feet below ground and kept at almost absolute zero, and the warming and cooling of the complete hadron collider track takes months. So the movie implies that they have a very powerful heating system (for the comfort and survival of the scientists) operating against the biggest, most powerful refrigerator in the universe.
The movie's ATLAS calorimeters--in reality, a specially galvanized steel substance that decays when bombarded by particle explosions--are little tubes (probably nanotubes) that all the particles travel through to be measured; and none of the particles go through any process of decay whatsoever... and the initial collision explodes incredibly slow, at a visible rate... and, of course, all of the scientists are silently proud of their achievement and softly smile to themselves, rather than experiencing rapturous joy at having performed a task none have ever done before and perhaps seeing for the first time in history the thing that some scientists have called The God Particle: the Higgs-Boson. They just softly smile and nod to themselves. HILARIOUS!!!
ANTIMATTER STORAGE IN A BATTERY POWERED TEST TUBE!!! And the battery only lasts until Midnight; on the stroke.
A group of papal potentials are kidnapped and left dead, or dying with ancient brands across their chests representing the four elements of ancient alchemy, which Robert Langdon(Hanks) refers to as the basic elements of science: Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water; and the ancient brands are printed in English! Not Olde English but Modern English. Olde English would have made sense. Eorde Fyr Wind Watar, or even Latin: Terra Incendia Ventus Unda. But no! It's in plain modern English! This major fault in a major plot point is gut-bustingly funny. Every time we see one we are reminded of the ludicrousness of the situation.
While running through an underground maze for some reason, along with guys in flack suits for some reason, Robert Langdon(Hanks) comes to a dead-end. The guys in flack suits turn around and leave for some reason, even though they're escorting Langdon for some reason. Langdon, in the deep, deep depths of some ancient tunnel kicks aside a pile of leafs to reveal the path he must take. LEAFS!!! We're deep in the catacombs under Rome, the place probably hasn't been disturbed for years aside from the random Illuminati or Cardinal, and there's a pile of LEAFS down here. And the pile of leafs from outside, obviously concealing something are not what attracts Robert Langdon(Hanks)'s attention, he is actually drawn in by the fact that all the bricks are the same shape in a line, like a path that leads to the leafs. The leafs are never mentioned as being mysteriously out-of-place deep in a dusty catacomb.
And for some reason there's a beautiful CERN scientist, Vittoria Vetra(Ayalet Zurer: she was in another movie that you never saw and probably never will), following Robert Langdon(Hanks) everywhere asking him why he's doing stuff. There's almost a reasonable explanation for her existence: she has a spare battery for the antimatter container, which has no timer on it, only blinking lights, but she can only change the battery if she has more than five minutes before the expiration of the old battery... which has NO TIMER. At one point, because a pen is not immediately available, she tears a page out of a priceless handwritten book by Galileo. If I were Langdon I would have assumed she was a spy trying to discredit my reputation, rather than a particle physicist, and turned her in immediately.
A Catholic douses himself in kerosene and sets himself ablaze, a la Buddha!!!
My favorite part of the movie is that all of the news reporters are standing on scaffolds and atop their news vans when the antimatter--instead of collapsing and dissipating into nothing when contacted by natural matter, this contact includes being looked at-- the antimatter explodes and washes a nuclear-bomb-like blast-wave over St. Peter's square-- leaving the entire rest of the Vatican, and all of Rome, undamaged--the explosion sends people flying and sliding, all the news reporters are tossed from on high, headfirst, really hard, at the road, most probably killed, and at least suffering concussions and brain hemorrhages. The next day they're all fine and everybody reports calmly without even a scratch.
Cool part: At one point Robert Langdon(Hanks) flips through a book containing sample symetric anagraphs that did not make the cut as the movie's Illuminati emblem.
The thing also contains micro homages to other Tom Hanks movies, for example I found myself muttering about how I bet he wished he'd remembered how to build the CO2 filter from Apollo 13, while trapped in the Vatican archives with a depleting air supply. The air supply was completely drained in a matter of less than an hour. And the first time we see Robert Langdon (Hanks) he is swimming, wearing a Speedo and, though all we've seen is his pale butt, I was instantly able to recognize him from his introduction in too-small tighty-whities from Big.
And, seriously, there's almost two and-a-half hours of this stuff!