MOVIE REVIEW: ANGELS AND DEMONS

Three of Seven Cows

Here’s a question: How many movies that have a detached eyeball rolling around on the floor still manage to be boring? I’ve never been to film school, but to my mind detached eyeballs spell excitement. Not so with Angels and Demons, the follow-up to The Da Vinci Code.

Dan Brown, author of the novels from which both movies are derived, is probably a doomed soul, and not for his knocks on Christianity. The church can handle anything he can throw at it, certainly. Whether I can sit through another flaccid adaptation of one of his books is another matter entirely.

When The Da Vinci Code was released there was widespread concern that it’s premise would undermine the faith of Christians in the divinity of Christ. Turns out that both films merely undermined this reviewer’s faith in the talent of Tom Hanks. His performance here is truly wooden, making perhaps the least interesting protagonist in recent memory. Not that the script gives him much to work with.

To be honest, I’m not even sure why Angels and Demons is awful. I only know that it is. There’s far more action than in The Da Vinci Code, and lots and lots of killing, and still I found it tedious. In essence, throughout the film Hanks is engaged in an elaborate scavenger hunt, the successful conclusion of which is preordained. That’s boring. Tacking on an absurd ending makes it annoying as well.

If there’s anything of interest here it’s the behind-the-scenes view of life in the Vatican. Sure, it’s fictionalized, but it was just enough of a taste to intrigue me. Christianity, or Catholicism specifically, is treated with a degree of respect that was surprising considering the atheistic premise of The Da Vinci Code. Perhaps Dan Brown has had a road-to-Damascus moment, or maybe the men in suits behind Angels and Demons saw no commercial advantage in alienating a billion faithful. At any rate, there’s no cause here for the Catholic version of jihad, otherwise known as a letter-to-the-editor-writing campaign. Whew! Thank God we dodged that one!

           
So, parents needn’t worry that their children will lose faith for having seen Angels and Demons. Sexual content is blessedly non-existent, and language is within bounds, so what we're left with is a detached eyeball, a heap of dead Catholics, and two hours of tedium. There are worse things. I give Angels and Demons three Catholic cows.