Story:
When something as mind crushingly useless as Angels and Demons is made, someone must be held accountable. Do we blame Ron Howard for his lack of judgment or Tom Hanks for a stilted performance? Or how about the writer of the original book? To be fair, this book is a fine guilty pleasure, and Tom is only doing what he can with the script.
However someone should take responsibility for wasting so much time and money.
Being the sequel to The DaVinci Code, the film starts with a dead pope and the four successors having been kidnapped by the Illuminati. This leaves only four hours until they are all dead and Vatican City is blown to heaven (or hell). Along the way there is lots of talk about the church's legendary blood soaked hatred of science.
Sadly, this thing follows the same tired formula also seen in the National Treasure franchise. Basically you have one clue that leads directly to another clue, leading to another clue, leading to another clue, leading to another clue until you're screaming for it to stop.
If halfway through you find you've had enough, might I suggest leaving just as they are attempting to diffuse a bomb? That way you can leave thinking everyone died horribly instead of staying to watch the obvious and inevitable disappointing ending.
But looking at the big picture, this film being bad might actually be a good thing. Blockbuster season opened with the horrible Wolverine, then the wonderful Star Trek, and now this piece of crap. So following this pattern, this week's film (Terminator) should be phenomenal.
