BLASPHEMER!

I love a bit of controversy, I really do. I love it when some scientist states that he's found a clue to the secret of creation, only for some hard-of-thinking, right wing, anti-choice zealot to decry him as a 'blasphemer' or possibly the more colourful 'infidel', so it was with some anticipation that The Demon and I headed off to see 'Angels & Demons' last night.
Like everyone else on planet Earth, I'd read 'The Da Vinci Code' and I thought it was ok. No more, no less, just 'not bad'. The film however, was pretty poor. It lost a lot of the excitement and pace that the novel had, and unfortunately featured Tom Hanks, an actor that is the personification of the word beige. 'Angels & Demons' compounds this casting faux pas by including my other least favourite actor of the modern era, Ewan McGregor, as some bizarrely accented Irish/Scottish/Italian stem cell hybrid catholic priest. Honestly, there is so much blandness when they are on screen together that I almost joined the Liberal Democrat party there and then.
None of this, however, detracts from what is a pretty damn good murder mystery, possibly because I gave the novel a wide berth and didn't know the twist at the ending.
What is sadly lacking is the dogma debunking of 'The Da Vinci Code', and whilst The Vatican refused to allow filming in any of their churches, I was hoping for a bit more of an uppercut than "Faith is a gift I've yet to enjoy" dribbled lifelessly from Hanks' expressionless lips.

Come on Ron Howard*, you've got bigger balls than that!

7/10


*...and a fit daughter.