Angels and Demons

A brief note in case anyone was wondering--I haven't blogged over the past several days because my job apparently decided to try and work me to death. I've been just a teensy bit busy.

Adam hauled me along to see this movie because, like most guys, he can't go into a movie theater by himself. Apparently, in the Guy Code, going to the movies by yourself is Lame. I was a little curious to see it anyway and I like Tom Hanks, so there wasn't a LOT of dragging involved.

If Angels and Demons were purely a fantasy movie involving a fantasy church and fantasy characters, it'd be a pretty cool movie. The plot pacing is good, there are twists and turns, and they've got a pair of really good actors--Tom Hanks and Ewen MacGregor--who take turns passing the focus back and forth between them like a couple of really good basketball players.

Due to the non-fantasy nature of the movie, however, it winds up looking like an effort to convince people that the Catholic church and ivory-tower academia are, well, cool and some junk. It's even explicitly said that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the Church is just a big ol' teddy bear who heals the sick and comforts the dying and preserves the treasures of centuries blah blah blah yeah I've heard this already. The academic, Robert Langdon, is *apologetic* about the fact that he doesn't believe in the invisible sky ghost, which is just pathetic.

This is one reason why I haven't read the book, which Adam said was a lot better. Some of the exposition in the book that made events clearer was left out of the movie due to time constraints (that, and it's the type of exposition that's really difficult to deliver in a movie). So my final conclusion is that it's probably not worth seeing if you haven't read the book, and if you have, you'll likely be disappointed.