There are some things that, through the virtue of sheer awesomeness, become virtually immune to criticism.
For instance, if the first moon base is just a log cabin where you pay to get beaten by moon-clubs in the minute before you suffocate to death, it's still a damn base on the moon. Anyone who says different is a jerk. Also pizza: basically perfect. You couldn't ruin it if you marinated it in a fish tank overnight and then cooked it with a fat man's hot breath.
That turned out grosser than I thought. Still, it's a valid principle, and it can apply to movies too. Vin Diesel doesn't have to listen to your naysaying, because he's made out of condensed victory. The Day After Tomorrow makes me want to cry for liking it, but what can you do, it's got Earth being taken over by wolves and snow tornadoes. The new Dan Brown adaptation Angels & Demons isn't good, it's simply awesome.
In Vatican City, the Pope has died. Before a new one can be elected, the four cardinals most qualified to replace him are kidnapped by the Illuminati, the legendary secret enemy of the church.
With only hours to save its brothers, the Vatican flies in smart guy expert Tom Hanks to help locate the cardinals before they're killed. He's teamed with Ayelet Zurer, a physicist with bad news: her lab's been robbed of a huge chunk of antimatter. If they can't locate it by midnight, the Illuminati will use it to nuke Vatican City off the face of the Earth.
That ain't much time to work with, but when all Hanks needs to start tracking down the bad dudes' hidden temple is five minutes with an old pamphlet, time takes on a different meaning. He's like Superman, but with the ability to read. Give him a week with a dictionary and an Esperanto phrasebook and he will probably evolve us all into beings of pure light who also smell like fresh mint.
That pell-mell pace is Angels & Demons' biggest strength — when you're hurtling along like a rabbit that's running on the back of another rabbit, it's hard to notice the many things that aren't so great. Despite the speed, director Ron Howard is skilled enough to keep all those plot threads and pseudo-historical minutiae from getting all tangled up.
Unfortunately, the backstory about the Catholic Church and their bitter Illuminati rivals just isn't that interesting. I'm sure it was a critical piece of the Dan Brown novel, but his books are thick as a ham hock (and not from one of those skinny pigs, either, but a really fat one). Chopped down and heavily simplified to fit the screen, the intricate history that drew so many readers may as well be the story of Go Team Good Guys vs. Angry Chumlord Hate-Squad X.
Hanks' always-welcome presence goes a long way. There's something deeply hilarious about a scholar hauling ass around Rome just in time to watch some oldie in weird robes get totally murdered, then repeating with identical results. Just about anyone else would look wildly incompetent doing this. For Hanks, you just kinda know it can't be his fault.
Hanks' nonstop chase eventually blows up into an exhausting series of climaxes that reach for a meaning it doesn't earn in the slightest. Yet Howard's direction is too competent to ever get boring or outright dumb — and you know what, OK, all that insane scheming and thwarting is too hypercrazy to deny. Angels & Demons works despite itself, a big silly mess held up by deft hands.
Grade: C+