Doesn't have a prayer

Rating: 4/10 (14 May 2009)

Every time a new pope is selected the Vatican blows smoke in the air and it seems as though every time Dan Brown is ready to make another couple million, he blows smoke up an audience's ass. "Angels and Demons", sequel to the equally controversial "The Davinci Code", will no doubt come under fire from Catholics and movie fans alike, yet still be a license to print money somehow. It's tedious, one-dimensional, bland, and the action (if you even want to call it that) is not only boring but it's also ugly. And as for Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard, well, you don't hear much about either one slumming for a paycheck but it looks as though "Davinci" has started a trend.
Hanks reprises his role as symbologist Robert Langdon, this time called to Rome by the Vatican to investigate the re-appearance of the secret scientific sect called the Illuminati. They have captured 4 Cardinals and are threatening to blow up the Vatican with anti-matter (basically much more lethal bomb). It turns into a race-against-time scenario when Langdon and physicist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) find out that the Illuminati appear to be killing the cardinals at the four alters of science. But are the Illuminati really behind this? They are aided by the Swiss Guard (led by Stellan Skarsgard). While this is all going on, the pope has recently died and the other Cardinals have been sequestered to pick a new one. Overseeing it all is Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor).
Think "Davinci Code" without the big reveal in the middle. The screenplay, written by Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp, is just a lot of running around. Langdon uses his theological knowledge to ridiculously make everything his compass. A pointing statue means go that way. A dot on a map here makes a cross so that must be the next place they have to go. C'moooooon! As they race from point A to B, director Ron Howard's rapid camera and Hans Zimmer's pounding musical score are poor substitutes for the plot's lack of thrills. There isn't much action. A one-sided shoot-out where an assassin basically just picks people off, some gruesome deaths (including two where characters are burned alive), none of it entertaining. Howard does a nice job of panning the camera along the various monuments and architecture of Rome but he can't save this tedious plot that completely jumps the shark in the third act with an obvious and hooey-filled conclusion.
Hanks is a pro at comedy and drama but he gets next to none of those things here. Instead he's a stuffed-suit without the slightest hint of personality, spewing out knowledge but never anything worth caring about. McGregor gets a nice speech about the religion vs. science debate, which he knocks out of the park, and Stellan Skarsgard and Armin Mueller Mueller Stahl both offer some menacing intrigue but these characters suffer from a script that relies heavily on contrived plot conventions over interesting characters.
The movie deserves some defense from the Catholics. Leave it alone. It's garbage. People know it's garbage before they even enter the theater. In fact, why even go to the theater? These stories may offer some guilty pleasures about Church secrets and conspiracies but in all honesty you can barely even call them stories. "Angels and Demons" is the last in the Robert Langdon series that I know of, and with any luck, it will stay that way.