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Definately the funniest and most accurate blog so far Dr K, well done!

Yes, I recently gave in and watched The Da Vinci Code and couldn't get over... well, really I couldn't get over the whole thing as it was completely ridiculous and horrific. And yes you're point of them blatantly explaining the plot is spot on. I thought it very reminiscent of a typical episode of Newsround where the presenter has to ask extremely simple questions with obvious answers so that the children watching aren't confused by anything. No, I'm not crazy there's definately parallels... you just need to read any page of a Dan Brown novel to realise this, ha.

While it's true that Angels & Demons was far funnier and more embarrassing than its predecessor, none of it approached Da Vinci Code's spectacular "I have to get to a library...FAST!" mid foot-chase.

And those anagrams. Dan Brown sure knows what an audience wants in their blockbusters.

Incidentally, I was also under the impression that those with albinism often have weak eyesight - making their career aspirations as assassin short-lived.

...All very well, but HAVE THEY TURNED THE LIGHTS ON?

This must be how the fella out of Fight Club looked to everyone else.

paradigm-redifining? surely that should be paradigm-redEfining Dr K? A Ph.D in English was it, you say?

Yours pedantically

Well, I thought as much.

Havent seen this yet (but I'm still going to).

anti-matter makes more sense to me than red-matter (whatever that is) and talking while running makes more sense for plot exposition than the Vulcan mind meld did to get Kirk up to speed, and yet.. and yet... Star Trek gets a big tick and this gets a raspberry

Having read the novel of the Da Vinci Code while hanging around in airports and come ot the conclusion that was pretty much the worst novel I have ever read, I have succesfully managed to avoid seeing the film adaptation, and things will be no different with this. I know I should probably treat them as independent entities...but...I'm not that forgiving I'm afraid.

The whole running and explaining thing is a sure sign of a pretty empty plot, since it's the trick often used in TV shows to make it seem like something is actually happening, when nothing is at all.

That made me feel tired just watching it. I'm sure I'm going to come out of Angels and Demons feeling a lot skinnier.

Mark,

I meant to write into the show earlier about this - but your blog will have to do! I saw the Da Vinci Code when it came out in the cinema, at a local multiplex. Throughout the entire film they left all the house lights up, at the time I postured it might be so people could find they're way out (after what you had said about the film).

After sitting through all two hours of it, my preferred answer is that they left the lights up so you could keep notes on the story in an attempt to understand what the hell was going on.

Crucially do I need to go back to the same cinema for Angels and Demons - or is it really so bad that taking notes wouldnt even help? ;-)

-Dakaix

Ewan McGregor hasn't been in a good film (or indeed been good IN a film) since Young Adam and before that...well, I can't really remember him being good for years and years. Moulin Rouge maybe?

Plus, I've never really forgiven him for those horrendous Davidoff Adventure adverts, in which he completely sold out in every conceivable way whilst promoting a perfume that smells like urine.

Just looking through his IMDB profile, his last few films:

Deception
Cassandra's Dream
Miss Potter
Stormbreaker
Stay
The Island
Star Wars 3
Valiant
Robots


This was Renton in Trainspotting. Why is he in such utter crap these days? And why has he seemingly forgotten how to act?

*** Warning spoilers ***

Managed to blag my way into the press screening of Angels & Demons last Tuesday at Leicester Square. Noticed Dr Kermode seemingly making a hasty exit from his seat long before the movie started - perhaps he had been asked to leave by Sony as soon as they realised that he was chap who had skiffled the movies predecessor.

Id expect Mark to be pleased that this was not as gloomily lit as the previous movie but perhaps displeased with the loud score clearly designed to boost the drama over the long running time. I bet he will say that the flying priest Ewan Mcgregor was miscast and his accent misplaced. I personally wrote the film off as soon as the bad guy let the good guys walk away because he hadnt been asked to kill them unlike the ten other carabineri he had dispatched in cold blood without being asked to either.

My colleague for the evening, the editor of the prestigious Nature Physics journal, was not impressed with the erroneous physics on display nor the clichéd men in white coats at CERN.

It reminded me a bit of another overlong bit of well-shot hokum with religious murders, Hannibal. But at least that didnt repeat the cheesy sight gag of an empty pair of guard boots first seen in the Zucker brothers Top Secret movie starring Val Kilmer.

Dr. K,
This is amazing.

A couple of weeks ago i put The Da Vinci Code on.

After 30 minutes i fell asleep.

I never fall asleep through films!

I paid £2 for the dvd. I wish i'd kept the £2!

I will not be going to see Angels and Demons!

Why can't Tom Hanks make Big 2?

Holy Tosh! This film was almost as bad as you said it was ;-)

Since this was a Sony Pictures production are you going to hand your award back in disgust?

All kidding aside, you know this film is going to make a shed load of money, just like the last one.

When I read 'Angels & Demons' I often had to stop and remind myself that this was a best-seller and that many people thought it good; towards the end I was actually embarrassed to be reading it, even though no-one saw me. Needless to say going to the film was a must, and it did not disappoint - a plot of such stroke-inducing stupidity played out with (what should be paradoxical but for some reason isn't) break-neck banality, this was a film of rare quality. It took some doing to make the 'Da Vinci Code' seem grounded, but with this effort Brown, Howard & Co. have succeeded admirably.

"Incidentally, I was also under the impression that those with albinism often have weak eyesight - making their career aspirations as assassin short-lived."

Funny you should mention that stephenglass, as there's this short called The Albino Code that's only 12 mins long that is a spoof the character of Silas.

Anyway, no one could pay me enough money to get me to watch this new prequel since The Da Vinci Code was such a lemon to begin with.

Seriously since when have any film prequels been great? They nearly always end up being rubbish (Wolverine and Star Wars, for example).

I have never laughed so hard as I did during the G.I. Pope scene with the helicopter. A completely ridiculous film.

Also, they convieniently have to turn the lights out in different sectors of the city throughout the film, brilliant!

Dr K you old fox!! How have you managed to wriggle out of having to go to Cannes this year? Your blog is the single most entertaining thing on the net by the way.

Need to work on the fitness there Mark...

I love you Kermode, but every time you hold Audrey Tautao's Frenchness against her, I can clearly see that you're coming down with a strong case of Obnoxious Southern Swine Flu. Get some antivirals fast.

If you think she's a bad actress, fine. But your somewhat unpalatable mockery ("Ooh laa laa, I am French") is no more valid than saying Tom Hanks is rubbish in the film because he's American. (You should know that better than most, after calling out films on their anti-Americanism). Point is, she's miscast and she obviously hated her time on the film, since they gave her nothing to do - leave her nationality out of it.

(I stand by calling you out on that uniquely Southerncentric/Londoncentric brand of mockery by the way. You can't keep a chip on your shoulder over the small amount of countries we didn't get to colonise, you know!)

fantasy escapist: It's not exactly a prequel in the same sense, it's based on a book that was written before the Da Vinci Code, so if anything, the Da Vinci Code is the sequel. I have heard that in the film they have decided to set Angels and Demons after the Da Vinci Code however. Not that any of this means I want to see it.

TheConciseStatement - I think Mark's point was that the lovely Audrey spent most of the Da Vinci Code being very Frenchly French because that was the role dictated by the script. (I'm Irish and I certainly didn't take offence at the Bejaysuses etc, because that apparently is indicative of the subtlety of McGregor's role and performance.)

The Da Vinci Code was one of the most tortuous cinematic experiences of my life. My then-girlfriend inherited some accursed VIP tickets for the film's premiere at her local multiplex from her friend, who got them for her boyfriend but had subsequently been dumped.

A few minutes in, the projector "broke down" and the film was stopped. Actually what had happened was that the cinema had blatantly overbooked the screening and everyone had shown up. It took them about fifteen minutes to sort it out. Wasn't worth the aggro.

A few months later we split up. The End.

I think there's a new blog entry for you there Mark.
Ewan McGregor... is he just in films for the money? Is he hoping he's on the Michael Cane career-path?

Dublin Dilettante - great story, dreadful film, and I'm sorry you couldn't patch things up, but probably for the best, yes? (And you've got to admit, going with PATRICK demonstrates a really lazy shorthand for Ewan McGregor's character. I'm sure someone at Columbia wanted to see if they could get away with Camerlengo Lucky Charms.)

Look I'm not trying to be overly PC. I'd like to think my love of Family Guy and South Park gets that out the way. And most of this video is very, very funny. The "Running, running, running" and watching him get tired is very funny. His actual reviews on 5 Live and Newsnight Review were hilarious too, as per usual.

And while I take the point that American films do trade heavily on stereotypes - Woody Allen should be banned from filming in London ever again - I do think there is an unpalatable element here of finding Audrey Tautao inherently annoying, simply because she's French. It does, in its own small way, feed into this wave of accepted anti-French jibes that both the English and Americans feel very keen to exhibit on as many opportunities as possible. I mean it's nowhere near Mitt Romney Concession speech bad (that was truly disgusting on a neo-Nazi level) but it does have a parallel with the snide style of anti-Scottishness and anti-Englishness that broadcasters think is harmless fun, but actually just cements the idea that such relations are beyond repair, at a time when they are at a new low.

In short, I have no problem with the funny accent, because IT IS funny and he does that with everyone - fine. It's specifically the "Ooh!... I am French!" line that I take issue with. Her character's not awful because she's French; her characters awful because it's awful. Tautological? Yes. But then bad characterisation knows no borders.

Nicely Concise :-)

What am I reading? Audrey Tautou's "character is awful" and

"they gave her nothing to do
"?

She's only the most important thing in the book, the film and probably the Universe.

And... Tatou's character has to be something of a cipher, doesn't it? Maybe that's why Brown made her a cryptologist.

Fair enough, so this one'll be more brief :

- it was a good post;
- he covered lots of points; - I was extending him the same courtesy as the time he spent on me.

**** BIG SPOILER ALERT ****

I'm not kidding. If you haven't seen the film, look away now, as they say.

OK, don't say you haven't been warned.

I had the same incredulous reaction as "twales" when the [h]assassin walked way from Drs. Langdon and Vetra without killing them, but within the tortuous plot line it is consistent and in fact necessary as they are still needed by the villain to help find the canister. But having said that, I had the distinct impression that the [h]assassin was shooting to kill Hanks when he was trying to foil the "fire" murder and had to crawl through a grate to escape the bullets but perhaps Howard was just trying to mislead us there.

I am sure the editor of Nature is a very learned fellow but Ron Howard did visit CERN and get their help to try to make the plot more scientifically plausible [but maybe you could ask him what he thinks about "red-matter" and if it is any less ridiculous, if he's seen the Star Trek movie. While you're about it, you could ask him how feasible warp drive actually is and whether he thinks if we achieve that it will be possible without time dilation or if, in fact, "ye canny break the laws of physics". Recall that warp drive supposedly allows you to create a bubble around yourself so that you avoid the Lorentzian time dilation effects. But I digress...]

Why you would want a biophysicist to be involved with particle physics experiments is beyond me, though. Why she would need enough antimatter to blow herself and her colleagues to kingdom come for experimental purposes is not clear and is also infeasible as I'm sure the editor of Nature would attest. She also addresses one of her colleagues as "Papa" when she talks to him in French although the filial relationship is not translated in the subtitles. This seems a bit strange as they are both Italian. Her "Dad" replies in Italian and English. This was all being filmed around the time of the writer's strike so maybe something got lost in translation, as they say. The only reason why we needed somebody with biological knowledge would seem to be to postulate that if the pontiff had been murdered in the manner suggested, then his tongue would have turned black. Ewan McGregor is pretty easily convinced to disinter the body to prove this, which seemed to be wholly unnecessary and also against his own interests ["I don't mind possibly incriminating myself by disinterring the body but, blimey, you are not going into that Vatican archive, matey!"]. I think just the fact that cardinals were turning up dead on the hour was a pretty good clue that there was foul play afoot.

When we have the discovery of the first murder, when they go into the church it is still light. The murder was supposed to have occurred at 8pm. The latest it gets dark in Rome is about 8:50pm and yet when they discover the body they have to cover their faces to avoid the smell of decomposition although the body's still warm. You never see Columbo doing that.

Now we have the villain who hated science, yet was confident enough in his knowledge of science that he knew he would be be able to escape the effect of the explosion. The way the blast was chucking around crash barriers and works of art in St. Peter's Square you would think anybody closer to the explosion would have no chance of survival. The Swiss guard were sent to fetch Ewan McGregor from hospital to the conclave so he could be declared Pope but meanwhile Langdon and Vetra were able to get into Stellan Skarsgard's office and find the evidence and then get Ahmin Mueller-Stahl out of conclave to show him and then Mueller-Stahl gets back to the conclave all before McGregor arrived.

Finally, Robert Langdon is a bit of a dope. It was the physicist who figured out why the first location could not be the Pantheon and who suggested there might be something significant about the final brand symbol, not Hanks [incidentally, the way the brand was being held looked like it would be really difficult to end up branding upside down]. It's been two outings now for Langdon and while he's been able to unravel the clues he's been completely unable to identify the villain both times even though he's been right under his nose and has been manipulating Langdon like a puppet. You would think Hanks would ask himself "Gee, why is somebody who is trying to blow up the Vatican leaving all these clues for me?". What we really needed was somebody with the intelligence of the murdered scientist who was able to figure out who was behind it all and put it down in his journal all on the strength of one papal audience even before any of the skulduggery had begun. But you'll be happy to know there is a third Langdon novel (and presumably film) in the works.

OK you can stop not reading now.

Apart from that, I thought it was fine :-) Nice shots of Rome. Some action, a bit of tension. Complete rubbish but as long as you don't treat it seriously, no worse than a National Treasure or a Night at the Museum or dare I say it, a Star Trek movie. Is it the religion dimension that really upsets people?

"A triumph. Kermode's running and explaining at the same time is a tour de force. 10/10"

I agree, what happened to Ewan McGreggor?

He has completely forgotten how to act.

He was painful to watch in Cassandra's Dream and judging by the bits Ive seen of Angels and Demons, he seems just as bad. (that's not even taking into account his useless Irish accent).

He has never come close to recapturing the heights of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting.

Read the Da Vinci Code, great page turner, stayed away from the film, mainly because most reviews said it had huge exposition problems. Producers promised they would deal with the exposition problems in the sequel. Obviously they haven't. So I won't be going to see this either.

Against my better judgment, I *may* be persuaded to go and see this film just to see Thure Lindhardt. He's a fantastic Danish actor - I highly recommend the recent Danish film Flammen & Citronen in which he was quite stunning even with Mads Mikkelsen and Peter Mygind in the cast. Then again, maybe this film will just make me disappointed in him as well. I'm sure his accent will be more convincing that Ewan McGregor's though...

I thought that was loads of fun - thanks Mark.

By the way, was that a bit of training for the next Kermode/ Mayo quadrangle dash? If so, why no flip-flops?

missy__m

Thure Lindhardt's accent in this film is pure ... Scandinavian.

Also, in the book, McGregor's character is from Sicily but they changed it for the film because they wanted to have him be a nationality that he could do the accent(!). So why not Scottish? Maybe they should have got Michael Caine or Simon Pegg.

Hi Mark, just heard your Angels & Demons review on the podcast with you and Simon. I saw the film and it reminded me of an episode of Scooby Doo. Just thought I'd share that with you.
Cheers!

In future, if anyone asks me whether I think they should see Da Vinci or A&D, I'll tell them to watch this instead.

So accurate.

Regarding Ewan McGregor and his hilarious accent, why didn't they simply cast James Nesbitt? He can *only* do Norn Irn.

I did think it was brilliant that all the way through - and for no particular reason - they kept turning the lights OFF. It was as if Howard had heard the legendary review of The Da Vinci Code and was doing on purpose.

You asked whether people thought it was laugh out loud stupid. In a word, no, most people were just stupefied into silence most of the time. Although they seemed quite engaged when Hanks was trapped in the archive.

I certainly heard a lot of derisive laughter in the "Who's driving the boat?" Liam Neeson film as well as in Vantage Point. So I would say those films were even more stupid.

Also, was it just me or did the shot of the MYSTERY VILLAIN stealing the antimatter at the start completely give it away? As someone who hadn't read the book, it was totally obvious to me who'd dun it as the camera dwelt rather too long on their features as the CERN scientist passed by. It did rather spoil the "twist", although I was laughing too much by that point to really be bothered.

Is this movie so bad it's great like Mama Mia or just plain bad? My husband and I both agreed that after hearing Mark's review, we both really want to see it! It sounds hilarious.

Am glad most of you have the same thoughts as me about Ewan McGregor. I think it all started with The Phantom Menace to be honest. There was a brief respite with Moulin Rouge but after that a load of dross. A great shame, and I hope he's in something good very soon!

Dr K

Read all the reviews etc and still decided to give it a go!

My problem with the whole film is Obi Wan becoming the Pope! This is surely a step too far in a galaxy far far away.

Hi Mark, I really enjoy the radio programme but wish to make a small, belated comment regarding an aspect of your review of this film.

On the radio show, you played a clip of Audrey Tautou and Tom Hanks talking about, amongst other things, Bernini and his Church and secret society connections. You then criticised the implausibility of the manner in which they spoke to one another, as you claimed that it was their job to know such things and were this real, they wouldn't be talking so formally to one another.

However, didn't Audrey Tautou's character work at the CERN lab? Her job had little in common with Robert Langdon's Symbolist field and one of the main reasons she stayed in the story was due to her understanding of the 'anti-matter'. Thus, I don't think it was unnecessary and unrealistic (in the clip you played, at least) that they went through these facts/myths with one another, although do agree that at times the script did very much condescend the viewer.

Anyway, keep up the good work!