26 May 2009

Angels and Demons

I had zero intentions of seeing this movie, but this weekend my dude and I went to a friend's wedding in a teeny little town by the lake, and the tiny movie theatre there was not to be resisted. $4 tickets! Forget about it. Perfect lazy Sunday.

So yeah, I did not expect this to be a good movie. BUT I was surprised by what an entertaining movie it was - I had a grand time watching it. Granted, I had slaughtered a serious amount of brain cells the night before, so that may have played a role, and my sense of irony was certainly heightened, but yeah, I got a kick out of this movie. I laughed so hard in the first 10 minutes that I almost cried, purely because of all of the SCIENCE! ANTIMATTER! RETINAL SCANNERS! hilarious. 

The plot is immensely complicated and makes very little sense. I haven't read the book, maybe it's more clear, but without giving anything away - if you're gonna have an evil plot, it needs a clear purpose. You gotta have goals son! So that's probably one of the biggest problems - that the story is ridiculous. 

Second major problem, the dialogue. Yowzers. 

Final big problem - Tom Hanks. I was talking to someone at the wedding about this, and he was saying that the problem is that you just don't buy Tom Hanks as this Indiana Jones type character, and indeed, he's a colossal failure. He's unconvincing as an action hero, but he's also (no offense) unconvincing as an intellectual - he's unpersuasive as a thinker. Really, about the only thing that does come through is the snark and sarcasm. 

Really though, despite the fact that the movie was ridiculously heavy-handed (the director obviously loves "profound" scenes of backgrounds, flickering candles, etc - the movie is over 2 hours long, and you could EASILY cut a good 30 minutes) and generally completely stupid, and went on way too long, it was fun. 

Is the movie anti-Catholic? Not really. It's definitely not completely flattering to the vatican as an institution, but I think it clearly implies that the Church COULD be a force of good, and presents plenty of people in it who would like to make it so (as well as others who don't). So naw, I don't think it's too bad. 

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