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Topic: Angels & Demons
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Aaron Garman
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1470
From: Toledo, OH USA
Registered: Mar 2003
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posted 06-01-2009 01:32 AM
Cinemark Movies 14, Mishawaka, IN
Auditorium 14, DTS
Presentation: ![[thumbsup]](graemlins/thumbsup.gif) increase fader please.
Was this a comedy?
Ok, let's find Tom Hanks to solve the crime. Shit, we better go to the Vatican to get clues.
Crap, someone is going to die. Better get to the church.
Son of a...he's dead. Better go back to the Vatican to find more clues.
What, now there's no air? Oh SHIT!
Ok, let's go to church again. Another one is about to Die. Run TOM, RUN!
Big explosion, Obi Wan parachuting, and eventually some white smoke.
Silliest movie of the year. Am I surprised though?
I did see the DaVinci Code already.
Bad movie, ridiculous movie. It was only passable because it killed 2 hours extremely well, which is just what I wanted that particular afternoon.
AJG
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Stu Jamieson
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 524
From: Buccan, Qld, Australia
Registered: Jan 2008
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posted 06-01-2009 11:54 AM
Ron Howard's The Da Vinci Code was a film adaptation of Dan Brown's book, an average story about a man with a dopey hairdo and an intriguing premise about self flagellating religious zealots with barb wire garter belts and clandestine codes hidden within Leonardo's art. Sensibly, Angels And Demons jettisons the dopey hairdo but to it's detriment also purges an intriguing premise. What is left is an average story utilising an unremarkable idea and not so much as a hairdo as a talking point.
Looking over Ron Howard's filmography it seems clear that he has his passion projects and he has those which merely pay the bills; for every Frost/Nixon and Apollo 13 there's an EdTV and Backdraft. Angels And Demons is definitely a bill payer. You get the impression that this story was conceived as a direct result of the runaway success of The Da Vinci Code and hence suffers from a severe case of sequelitis; Robert Langdon reduced to merely a kind of ecclesiastical Indiana Jones decoding a seemingly endless procession of tedious cryptic clues. The former story was based on an intriguing idea of which Dan Brown was not the author, I suspect the central idea for Angels An Demons was largely of Brown's manufacture.
Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle
The film includes some truly ridiculous setups which completely defy any sane logic. Take, for instance, the set piece where our hero becomes trapped in a high security, climate controlled vault during a power outage. When the power goes out, the backup batteries kick in but apparently the uninterruptible power supply doesn't power the stringently controlled air conditioning system, neither does it power the electronic lock on the door. It does, however, power a video monitor (the only thing it does power other than the moody lighting) which kindly advises how much battery life is left as you die a rapid asphyxiating death. A backup power system whose sole purpose is to run a video monitor telling you that it is on backup is a level of redundancy which defies belief. It reminds me of that button in Hitchhikers which, when pressed, lights up a sign which says, "Do Not Press This Button Again". And judging by the rate at which our hero is running out of oxygen, we can only presume that the power failure results in all the air being immediately evacuated from the room as well. Ridiculous! And this is not an isolated occurrence. Here's another couple which annoyed piss out of me:
a) it is totally inconceivable that a couple of professional scientists like Langdon and that chick would purposefully desecrate an historically significant document (i.e. tearing out a page) rather than spend 30 seconds copying a line out of it.
b) when Langdon shoots the glass wall it is clear that it is comprised of a bullet resistant laminated construct yet seconds later it miraculously transforms into toughened glass and fractures into thousands of pieces. (And if you say that such a miracle was possible because it was in the Vatican I'm going to punch you!) Of course, the fact that I have experience in the glass industry makes this plainly obvious to me.
In the end when one of the good guys is seemingly approaching certain death, the "sad" music is wailing on the soundtrack but do we care? No, not really, but it nicely sums up the movie as a whole.
5.5 out of 10.
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