Meticulous silliness

You don't need to believe in Angels & Demons to care about who wins

By Paris H. Martin

Inspector Olivetti (Pierfrancesco Favino), Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Claudio Vincenzi (David Pasquesi) make a grisly discovery in a Roman church in Angels & Demons.

ADVERSTISMENT

LITTLE ROCK — Angels &

Hi again, it's me, Paris (did you miss me?), back with another review of a major motion picture now in local theaters! This one is Angels & Demons, and it is directed by cultural icon Ron "Opie" Howard and stars the world's greatest actor, Tom Hanks! It's about the tension between science and religion and inability of the human mind to reconcile what is known with what is unknowable. It's also about ambigrams, which are kind of like Sudoku for people with math phobias and are used extensively by the creators of heavy metal album covers to pass secret messages to their basement-dwelling teenage minions.

It's about the Illuminati, which - correct me if I'm wrong - are kind of like the third-degree dungeon masters of the New World Order and are the very people who decide who gets to be the president and the head of the World Bank and who gets to direct and star in major motion pictures like Angels & Demons. They were the guys in the masks in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes WideShut (1999). (They also shot J.R. and fluoridated our drinking water.)

Movie

Angels & Demons

87

Rating: PG-13

Length: 2 hours, 18 minutes

More information

It's also about Vatican City, which is to Rome what Cammack Village is to Little Rock, with its own special police force and conclaves of cardinals. (I saw a fat cardinal on the deck this morning. I barked at him. Stupid bird.)

It's also about antimatter, which is like the opposite of matter, which I guess means that it doesn't matter, just like Hitchock's famous Mac-Guffin, except that it blows up real good.

Anyway, in this movie Tom Hanks is a Harvard symbologist named Robert Langdon who is called to Rome to investigate a murder committed with one of these ambigrams. Ouchies! Someone - could it be the Illuminati? - has kidnapped all the Great Cardinals of Europe and is threatening to destroy St.

Peter's Basilica in a blaze of light. Oh no, somebody get the symbologist, stat! Someone must tell us what the sculpted seraphim are pointing at!

Langdon is smart, but he's not nearly as smart as lovely and icy Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) who made up a batch of antimatter for humanitarian purposes and is disappointed it got snatched and turned into a ticking time bomb. Apparently she saw The Da Vinci Code and noted how that turned out for Audrey Tautou because she doesn't even try to conduct any chemistry experiments with Tom Hanks. Or maybe she just has a boyfriend back at the CERN lab where she works.

Speaking of boyfriends, Ewan McGregor shows up in a bespoke cassock looking yummy but it turns out he's a no-funallowed religious nut. And Stellan Skarsgard, who's the dad of the hot vampire (not Bill!) on True Blood, plays the head of the Swiss Guard who doesn't have to wear the meticulously researched silly uniforms because he's the boss and no grown-up should have to wear blue, red, orange and yellow pantaloons.

Now that I think about it, Angels & Demons is full of meticulously researched silly things. It is itself a meticulously researched silly thing and I don't for a minute believe that anyone associated with this film ever took any of it seriously. After all, Opie is the boss on this movie! (The terrier next door is named Opie. He's silly too. And probably meticulously researched.)

I wasn't bored with Angels& Demons. Good job, Mr. Opie Howard, you've once again delivered a quality entertainment product for the masses. And you've effectively sown disinformation about our true mission. Hurray! Kalaka barada nikto! I hereby confer onto you the order of two pink ponies!

Paris H. Martin is still too little to Twitter, but if you send an e-mail to

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

she'll be happy to read it!

MovieStyle, Pages 37, 42 on 05/15/2009