Angels and Demons movie

I saw Angels and Demons (or is that Angles and Deacons?) this morning and it will be the subject of my second movie review. I would have to classify this movie as 'okay'. It wasn't wonderful and it wasn't bad. The biggest problem is that it didn't really engage my emotions. That could be because I just read the book, so I had a good idea what was happening. I've been analyzing and trying to figure out why it didn't move me very much, and I think a big reason was because the antagonist didn't seem to have strong motives for their actions. In the book, it was clear, though, and I thought the ending pleasantly surprising. The movie, though, lost it somewhere. Probably because, for the sake of time, they cut too much out.

A lot of the cuts in the plot and characters made sense for time and simplicity, and for the most part, I think they did well at streamlining. It's just that they needed something to make the antagonist's actions make more sense, even if it was something not in the book. Towards the end of the movie, I got a little excited when I thought they might end it with a different surprise ending, but they didn't. The betrayal at the end just didn't have any teeth.

Of course, one of my main concerns about movies is content. Angels and Demons got a Kids in Mind rating of 1.7.3. I have no idea where they got the '1' rating for sex, since the worst thing that happened was that the protagonists held hands. The '3' language rating was probably deserved, though I don't remember much. Of course, we hear so many of the 'd' and 'h' words all the time, it's easy to block them out. The worst aspect were the gory scenes, so the '7' is well deserved. This was not a movie for the squeamish. One trick that worked for me was to almost close my eyes so that the screen was blurry. That way, I could see enough of what was going on without the vivid detail (call me a wimp). Overall, though, I think the movie was a kinder, gentler version of the book which had a lot of language issues and was more gruesome.

Bottom line: See it if you don't mind gory deaths and are mildly in need of entertainment. Otherwise, wait until it's on DVD where it can be watched with a Clearplay filter.