See It or Skip It: 'Angels & Demons'

Bless us father, but we must confess, the Dan Brown/Da Vinci Code bus is not one we ride.

However, Angels & Demons, the prequel to Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the follow up to the blockbuster 2006 film adaption, is a thoroughly enjoyable movie. 

It must be a miracle! A sequel that’s better than its predecessor.

Like The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons stars Tom Hanks as renowned symbologist Robert Langdon, who is called on, once again by returning director Ron Howard, to offer endless recitations of exposition while racing against the Illuminati, a secret sect who seems hell-bent on destroying the Vatican after the death of a beloved pope.

Unlike …Code, the story surrounding all that verbal vomit in Angels is engaging and well-paced. Most of Langdon’s tsunami of factoids, references and historical offers can wash over the audience as they follow Langdon and his new female sidekick, Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer stepping into Audrey Tautou’s role) as they hunt down a canister of anti-matter and an assassin who’s murdering four priests every hour on the hour until the antimatter is set to explode, taking with it the Vatican and all the cardinals in conclave trying to ordain a new pope.

While Code was manic, Angels is visceral. Despite less than stellar CGI, a story that’s absolutely preposterous and a certain lack of prevailing logic, Hanks and company are able to supply the audience with exactly the kind of experience summer movie goers demand: a low-impact one.

Turn off your brain, order the extra-large combo and behold Ewan McGregor playing the ultimate altar boy, Stellan Skarsgard attempting to be bad cop as a member of the Swiss Guard (it doesn’t even sound tough), and a brief scene with Hanks in a banana hammock.

Is it a great film? Heavens no. But it is good fun.

See it.

—Sasha Perl-Raver