REVIEW BOARD: Angels & Demons

Another May week, another Blockbuster on the marquee. Last Friday saw the release of the pretext to make money sequel to 2006’s The Da Vinci Code (which I confess to having neither seen nor read), itself based on another Dan Brown novel: Angels and Demons.

And where the original rocketed to top-money status on the fuel of controversy, this one seemed to have been only politely anticipated, and mostly by fans of the books. Before launching into what forum members thought of it, let me just say in a completely rhetorical manner – What the HELL is wrong with Ewan McGregor these days??? I can’t understand what made one of the most spectacularly talented –and psychologically stable- actors of his generation sign on to a string of critical or commercial duds as his last 10 or so films, from The Island (Michael Bay, Ewan? Really???) to Deception by way of Stormbreaker.  Ewan, buddy, on your next globe-trotting trip with Charlie Boorman, please bring along Danny Boyle so you two can make-up and get going on the Trainspotting follow-up we’ve all been craving since the novel was published!

Ahem…So as I was saying, Angels and Demons came out last week, and being a forum of mostly movie watchers, QSS had a discussion thread on whether it was worth bothering with.  Here’s what some of you had to say on the film:

From Debloree:

I kinda thought it sucked. I can’t put my finger on what it was, maybe it just seemed jerky and uneven throughout, or like they’d rush off to here or there and forget to tell us why we were going here or there. In the Da Vinci code, no details were left out. It flowed together. This movie doesn’t. None of the characters really stood out.source), but if others thought this sequal was weak, as I did, it’ll get beat out by next week’s opener.

From D34DT0Y:

I think the book Angels & Demons is better then the book Da Vinci Code, so I had hoped this movie would have been as well. Oh well.

From Aceron:
It seemed like an episode of carmen sandiego but with a plot twist at the end.
Lets go somewhere and get a clue! Yay, now lets go somewhere and get yet another clue. Ok, this is getting tedious. How many more clues do we need before we can end this movie?

From Bam76:

Over all I thought it was a good movie. One of the benefits from not having read the book might be why. As far as the flow of the movie, yes it did jump around some but for the most part I thought they did a decent job of tieing it together.

From Akron:

I’ve read the book but the movie was lame (the book was equally lame to i’ts precursor) in comparison. Franchises are no good for content clearly…

From Compass:

at least in “angels and demons” tom hank’s long ugly hairstyle is missing. got a link and watched it for 20 minutes………it sucks. i have the books and found em great. also the da vinci code. but i hate tom hanks now! you all know the book/movie thing. this is not langdon! damnit!!!vin the da vinci code book it made me feel smart to read 3 chapters in 5 minutes!

From jayfix:

they are more ron howard movies than dan brown movies, ron howard took good books written by dan brown and turned them into one that was ok (dc) and then this snore (and) dan brown’s books were not to blame at all. opie is the one who messed up the whole thing.

Seen the movie and would like to Roger-Ebert your heart out about it? Head over to the discussion thread RIGHT HERE.

This week’s big release is yet another sequel (what would Summer be without ‘em…), but this one already prophesised as the bad aftertaste-washer for the previous entry, Terminator Salvation.  And the Blog will be there after a week’s worth of opinions to take it all out of context and post it up as entertainment. I love Blogging!

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