Another Failed Attempt

Rating: 5/10 (22 May 2009)

Angels and Demons seems to be yet another failed attempt at converting a Dan Brown novel to the big screen. I am going to add myself to the growing ranks of people who are all stating that the film is not as good as the book , which is a premise I had fully accepted before I even sat in my seat in the cinema. However after watching the film I have realized that making this film was bound to fail as there too much to squeeze into 120 Hollywood minutes.
I expected the essence of the book to be extracted such as the story of CERN and the creation of ant-matter unfortunately this was dealt with in roughly about 10 minutes, of which 5 minutes consisted of long panning shots of the Large Hydron Collider. This is a glaring omission as the creation of anti-matter and the history of CERN creates the backdrop to the science versus religion debate which is what drives the film.
Where the film falls down the worst is that it completely fails to capture the excitement of Robert Langdon trying to discover the Illuminatis path to enlightenment which is an amazing cryptic puzzle spread right across Rome. Instead we are faced with Tom Hanks running from statue to statue shouting at people followed closed by Vittoria Vetra, who is possibly the most one dimensional character I have seen played in a long time she basically had no need to be in the film, her character was that badly written.
All in all the film is entertaining to watch but will not be remembered and is definitely not a classic. However if you have read the book you will be disappointed so hopefully it will be the last time we will see Robert Langdon symbologist on our big screens.