Laughably poor

Rating: 4/10 (15 May 2009)

Great line early on - "Oh thank God the "symbologist" has arrived!" -spoken sarcastically...unfortunately if you have read the book or if you do go to see the movie you will know that it is reiterated more warmly at the end of the film.....it might even be on the posters and trailers for all I know.....
Let me ask you , once you've been to see the film.....did you think that you needed all the symbolism explained?
As Dr Mark Kermode said in his review on BBC Radio, the problem with the "Da Vinci Code"...was that they stood around and pointed at something, explained it and then rushed to the next place.....Angels and Demons has improved.....now they do the explanations whilst they are running to the next set piece - "result"!
On a separate note, if you want to play a little game in the movie....try to work out what area of the world Ewan Magregor is supposed to have come from ......Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins comes to mind....
And if you don't laugh out loud about ten minutes from the end when Hans Zimmer's music tries to capture the solemnity of the moment amidst the funniest slapstick since Laurel and Hardy.....then you take yourself and this movie far too seriously....!
The biggest problem for me is that I believe cinema audiences are not fools...... we do not need exposition every thirty seconds.....because let's face it...if you've read the book you know most of the stuff...and if you haven't read the book...then you might have been tempted to read the book to get the detail....(I know there will be some for whom such a movie would confirm that Hollywood dumbs down everything)...but in this film they could have used the symbolism that is the source of the film to make a much more cinematically intelligent movie e.g. "Light" as a symbol for enlightenment and yet in contradiction Lucifer the "light giver".....or make more of the conflict between "science" and the "church" which is the cornerstone of the film's plot or illuminate the contradictions between angels and demons.
But then maybe I am wrong, maybe we the audience are stupid and if we go to a movie based on a best seller...we can't expect anything else but that the accountants and the number crunchers will have told Ron Howard what they want the film to "do"....in all senses, artistically and financially.....
For me opportunity lost to make a great intelligent movie that would have departed no more from the book than the film we have before us.
Sorry...I know an immense amount of work goes into films and I rarely write critical reviews......but if you are a genuine movie fan you should go to see this movie and play another game rather than "guess the accent"...perhaps you can determine how you might have filmed it given the gazillions that Ron and the team were given to make it.