If the book was “450 pages of irritatingly gripping tosh”, then the movie accurately reflects the book – except the movie isn’t gripping.

The movie has been getting terrible reviews, and I so wanted to be positive, but it’s difficult. But then, to serve its purpose, the movie had to be bad. It was a chance for pop-lit readers to emulate more widely read individuals by coming out of the film complaining that “it wasn’t as good as the book”, and give them another chance to slip into conversation that they read, ergo they must be intelligent. Some even go to the trouble of slipping in how “Angels and Daemons is a much better book”, as if to emphasise how well-read they are, when in fact they’ve merely read a second novel by the same author following the same formula. And then, at the same time, it gets people like me going to see it, to see just how bad it really is.

I don’t intend to be all snooty here, but it’s hard to be nice about a terrible book being made into a terrible film. Much like the book, the film really has no point to it. There’s a whole world of the morality of faith to be explored, which is just ignored in favour of pseudoscience and revival of popular myth. It was the ultimate formulaic Hollywood blockbuster, just at the book was the ultimate formulaic best-seller.

In truth, the film isn’t all that bad. As with the book, it acheives everything it sets out to do and more. It’s just a shame that its objective appears to be to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and not to explore the real issues. But, heck – since everyone’s talking about it, it’s probably worth seeing anyway.

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