I thought I'd kick this Foyeurism off with something a bit out of the ordinary. Ah, the things you can find on YouTube. Take a scene from a well known Eighties sitcom, recut the scene, add forboding music, and just like that this sweet innocent sitcom takes on disturbing new dimensions. You'll never look at ALF the same after watching this:

On to more pressing matters, for those that prefer audio to reading, the seventh installment of the Foycast is up at Dread Central. Entitled "Waffle House of Horrors", like Seinfeld, this is the podcast about nothing. We still managed to fill an hour and those that have heard it say it's funny. That's amazing considering it came about at the very last second and does not focus on any one particular topic. Here's the link.

Now for those of you that still enjoy reading, this month, we begin with the newest movie from the director of FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY. Then I officially induct the Christian propaganda mindblower C ME DANCE into the hallowed halls of the Foyeurism. I realize I did that review for Dread Central this past April and there's a good chance you already read that particular review, but if ever a movie deserved to be immortalized in the Foyer, it would have to be C ME DANCE. Rounding out the month is a look at the nutty ANGELS & DEMONS, a summer blockbuster that takes all the inner working of the Vatican and morphs it into a story worthy of a Scooby Doo cartoon. Dancing. Jesus. More Dancing. Catholicism. I smell a theme brewing. Time for some...

DANCE DANCE TRANSUBSTANTIATION

From the director of FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY... Uh oh.

I just don't understand this whole dance movie craze that has plagued us these past few years. I don't understand the popularity of Dancing with the Stars either. I'm not a dancer. I generally do not derive entertainment from watching others dance. And don't even get me started on competitive figure skating.

But going back to these dance movies, all of which strike me as just being different versions of the same film, they're not even dance movies in the vein of the classic Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical. I can understand the continuing popularity of those films even if I don't share the enthusiasm. What we keep getting inundated with are more like 21st century equivalents of the breakdancing movies of the 80's, but with much of the camp value devalued by all-too-serious melodramatic storytelling. We're to the point now that the Wayans Brothers have produced a spoof movie called DANCE FLICK and I don't want to see that either. I just don't see the appeal of these movies.

The latest is LOVE 'N DANCING. If you need me to tell you what this movie is about then you clearly haven't bothered to read the title. It doesn't much more complex than that. The tagline for the film is "Only two things in life are universal." I guess that must be in reference to love n' dancing. Sorry, death n' taxes; looks like you've been replaced.

Clearly gunning for the Dancing with the Stars crowd, LOVE N' DANCING is the perfect dance movie for people that consider themselves too old for the STEP UP movies and thought the plot of CHICAGO was just too complicated. The audience for LOVE N' DANCING I'm guessing would be bored middle-aged housewives and disaffected women in their thirties who have prematurely drifted into mid-life crisis territory.

So why would I watch it? Do you have to ask? I was the only white guy in a packed theater on the opening night of YOU GOT SERVED. I was the only person in the theater on the opening night of C ME DANCE. Do you really think LOVE N' DANCING is a stretch for me? The only stretch here is that LOVE N' DANCING actually got any sort of theatrical release. We're talking about a movie written and directed with all the flare of a Women's Entertainment Network production, with just a hint of ABC Afterschool Special-ism. It's harmless. It's crap. It's harmless crap. So simple-minded is the script for this drivel, only thing missing here is a subplot about trying to win the big dance competition at the end in order to use the prize money to save a neighborhood community center.

Amy Smart is Jessica Donovan, an unfulfilled thirtysomething bookish school teacher whose own students come up to her after class to ask why she seems so sad. Jessica once dreamed of dancing on Broadway; now she daydreams of screaming - SCREAMING - at the children in her class about not wasting their lives doing boring stuff, such as educating the impressionable young minds of the future. Forget dancing to improve her mood; this woman is in dire need of Zoloft.

Jessica's life will change forever when a motivational speaker appears at her school and introduces her and the children to the amazing, exciting, empty life enriching world of swing dancing. Now unless things have really, really, really changed since I was in school, two people getting on stage in front of an elementary school assembly and doing some swing dancing will not elicit the same kind of riotous applause from a room full of kids usually made by the live audience at a Married With Children taping whenever the sound of a toilet flushing was heard.

Swing dancing quickly becomes Jessica's new life obsession. Before you know it, she's taking off her glasses and letting her hair down. Whoa! Turns out she's sexy! Who'd a thunk it? The joy she'll come to experience from learning the art of swing dancing will even spill over into the classroom; her pupils now coming up to her after class to tell her how much they enjoyed the presentation of the knowledge she has instilled in them.

Billy Zane is Kent, Jessica's self-absorbed and frequently aloof fiancé. He's a workaholic constantly talking into his Bluetooth about business and all he cares about is his work. And watching Robot Chicken. But mostly his work. He has no time or interest in learning to swing dance in time for their nuptials. But will there be any nuptials when your unhappy fiancé is cavorting around in the arms of another man learning to swing dance, or as certain fundamentalists call it, "part of the counterculture which seeks to implant seeds of rebellion in young people’s hearts and minds.” But enough about that; this isn't a review of FOOTLOOSE.

Billy Malloy is Jake Mitchell, motivational speaker and former West Coast Swing Dancing Champion. Five years ago, Jake and his partner Corinne won the World Swing Dance Championships; ever since he’s wondered if he truly deserved to win or if the judges gave him the sympathy vote because of his physical handicap. Jake is legally deaf after having lost his hearing as a teenager due to a severe ear infection. Hearing aids is the only thing that allows him to hear anything at all and he can only dance because he can feel the music vibrations.

I have a friend who suffers from a similar, if not more serious form of hearing loss, and let me assure you that he does not have to rely on musical vibrations in order to dance. This Jake Mitchell character may very well be the least credible deaf person ever portrayed on film. His deafness is merely an inconsistent plot device. Just how deaf is he supposed to be if he can clearly hear a kid heckle him in the audience at a school assembly but cannot hear someone talking to him standing all of two-feet behind him? He never really seems to be that deaf or have that much difficulty functioning yet the film continually regards Jake's ability to dance while suffering from hearing loss as if he were the blind ice skater from the movie ICE CASTLES. I believe Jake Mitchell is the very model of the term "handi-capable".

Now might be a good time to mention that in addition to being the star of LOVE N' DANCING, Billy Malloy also happens to be the screenwriter and one of the producers. According to IMDB, Malloy is also a real-life swing dancer, motivational speaker, and stand-up comic. That probably explains why he looks more comfortable on the dance floor than Amy Smart and why nearly every line out of his mouth sounds like its being spoken by a motivational speaker, or at the very least, an infomercial salesman. Regardless of the scene or the emotion, the man always fast talks like Charlie Schlatter by way of Vince from Shamwow. Billy Malloy's previous film may have been a serial killer flick but it is here that his acting is murder.

Jake decides to take another run at the Swing Championship but needs a new partner. An angry Jessica decides to show up Kent by volunteering to be Jake's partner for the tournament. As the film approaches the one hour mark it almost completely devolves into a series of dance training montages. Amidst all these montages, Jessica and Kent fall out of love - not that they ever appeared to be all that in love to begin with, and Jessica and Jake will fall in love - not that they ever appeared to be all that in love either. You see Billy may be deaf but he actually listens to Jessica, unlike Kent, who only listens to the voices speaking to him through his Bluetooth. I realize the dramatic irony; the problem with it is the majority of Billy and Jessica's scenes consist of them dancing and 95% of the time when they do talk it is only to discuss dancing. They fall in love and become a championship swing dance team despite their crippling handicap. No, not his being hearing impaired. The real handicap is Smart and Malloy having zero chemistry on or off the dance floor.

The only genuine emotion the film ever manages to convey is that Billy truly does love his former dance partner Corinne and has been longing for her for years; she's involved with another man. Then comes the scene late in where Corinne finally appears to reciprocate her feelings for Billy, at which time he completely blows her off because he's now in love with Jessica, at which moment Corinne transforms into a jealous bitch who, as one of the judges for this year's championships, vows to make sure they won't win. She'll relent on that vow when she watches them on the dance floor together and realizes how much in love they are - the only person watching who could come to that conclusion.

At the big swing dance competition finale we're treated to three full dance routines, the third being Jake and Jessica's potential championship winning number. Given Billy Malloy has professional swing dance training, watching him with the obvious novice Amy Smart really is like watching a Dancing with the Stars pro/celeb tandem doing a routine in the show's opening weeks when the celeb is still learning the steps. To cover for this, long view shots and extreme close-ups that do not include Smart's head are relied upon for complex moves that clearly required use of a dance double. The crowd goes wild despite their routine being quite noticeably the worst of the three routines. An on-screen graphic informs us they finished third in the competition (I assume third out of three because I'm sure if there were other tandems competing their placing would have dropped even further) but assures us they will go on to be two-time champions.

Ah, the ROCKY ending. With any luck LOVE N' DANCING will become a franchise leading to the eventual sequel where Billy and Jessica have to compete in the World Swing Dancing Championships against an evil Russian team that cheat by poisoning Jessica with radioactive polonium-210 that causes her to go blind, culminating in the final dance-off where deaf Billy and blind Jessica overcome their handicaps to win one for the US of A. It could happen. They made thirteen WITCHCRAFT movies; I assure you this is not out of the realm of possibility.

Now if nothing you have read in this review has sold you on LOVE N' DANCING then I should mention the running joke with super hot Leila Arcieri trying to break-up with her obsessively neurotic dumpy lesbian girlfriend that hits all the comic notes of a FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY subplot.

And who can forget the comic genius of Caroline Rhea, playing a fellow teacher, getting swept up in Jessica's swing dancing wake and busting out a few clumsy dance moves of her own in the school bathroom only to knock over the garbage can? Ha! Ha! Ha! If you don't see it here I'm sure you'll see Rhea's bathroom dance number if they ever get around to making THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT! IV.

Finally, I'd like to say a quick word about the LOVE N' DANCING's soundtrack, if I may. I heard exactly one song on the soundtrack that did not make me long for Jake's disability.

What Would Jesus Do? Go see a better movie.

I told three of my friends and co-workers - all regular churchgoers - about the details of this film after I saw it wanting to gauge their reaction. One just rolled his eyes and shook his head. Another reacted with a sort of bemused disdain, laughing at how stupid it sounded while being slightly appalled by the misguided message; she initially thought I was even making it all up until I showed her the trailer. The third, a self-avowed Southern Baptist Republican, was the most offended by what I described, quite vocal in his opposition to fundamentalist propaganda like this because to him it gives all Christians a bad name by leading many to believe that all people of faith share the same narrow worldview.

There's certainly a market for a movie like C ME DANCE. Just not in South Mississippi where I live, it would seem; only myself and the Lord were in that theater opening night and I think the Lord snuck out to slip into the FAST & FURIOUS theater at some point. The Dove Foundation gave C ME DANCE a score of 4/5. How bad must a faith-based film be to garner a negative score from the Dove Foundation? Are there no Christian Razzies?

C ME DANCE was written by, directed by, produced by, and co-starring "Pastor" Greg Robbins. What Robbins doesn't appear to understand about the craft of quality filmmaking could probably fill another Bible. All one need do is glimpse the trailers for other recent Christian cinematic offerings like FIREPROOF, THR3E, UNIDENTIFIED, and the OMEGA CODE movies and you can immediately discern those films were at the very least made by people with some degree of competency behind a camera. Looking like a Trinity Broadcasting after school special from the Eighties, Robbins' movie is shot with less professionalism than your average Latter Day Saints PSA. How he finagled his film into a theatrical release is beyond me.

Robbin's greatest sin, however, is screenwriting. Nobody and I mean nobody in this movie talks like a real human being. I don't know how good Pastor Robbins is in the pulpit when he's proselytizing but I can assure you he does not know how to write dialogue to save his soul. All he seems to comprehend about the art of storytelling is heavy-handed symbolism and hammy sermonizing.

In all fairness, its not just faith-based films that have lost the art of subtly interweaving underlying messages into the drama; look at most recent mainstream Hollywood movies about global warming, the war in Iraq, etc. that deliver their sanctimonious messages with the finesse of blunt force trauma. C ME DANCE doesn't just wear its message on its sleeves, it's wearing a berka.

One moment Sheri chides dad about the futility of faith and prayer in light of her condition and two scenes later she's racing dad out the door to get to church on time. Satan first appears with red contact lenses, then later with no contact lenses, and finally with white contact lenses. If only continuity were considered a sin.

As for the cast, let's just say there's a reason this movie isn't titled C ME ACT and move on.

Despite some promotion pitching C ME DANCE as having an element of horror to its tale, what little intended terror there is proves far more miniscule than initially believed; though there still remains elements of a horror movie, which I'll get to momentarily.

Seventeen-year old Sheri "just wants to dance and hang out." Her dreams of being a ballerina dashed when she is diagnosed with terminal leukemia. She'll suffer no hair loss, no energy loss, no physical wasting away; she'll continue to look and act like the cute bubbly Jamie-Lynn Sigler look-a-like with anime eyes she was before being given a medical death sentence. She truly becomes blessed when the Holy Spirit - appearing in the form of a blinding bright light in the dining room chandelier - anoints her with the power to convert non-believers to Christianity with a single touch. As her dad puts it, "Man, this is gonna tick off the devil."

Indeed. Lucifer’s first insinuation into Sheri’s life is doing what he was most well known for in the Bible: heavy breathing crank phone calls. Dad immediately knows this is the devil on the phone; could just as easily have been Darth Vader.

Satan physically manifests as some dude clad in a black trench coat because the devil knows Sheri watched a movie she wasn't supposed to years ago that caused her to develop a phobia of men in black trench coats. THE MATRIX? UNDERWORLD? SAY ANYTHING?

We're told the only powers the devil truly possesses are the abilities to trick you, deceive you, and scare you. Coincidentally, also three tactics commonly employed by many politicians and televangelists.

Satan's big comeuppance consists of Sheri telling him "You are such a loser" and then evil incarnate gets left in the dust as Sheri speeds off on the back of a motorcycle driven by ex-pro wrestler Nikita Koloff. A more satisfying requital would have been to have Koloff get off the bike and floor Satan with the Russian Sickle.

Before scolding the devil, but after an all-out brawl with violent school bullies - a subplot introduced without a smidgen of set-up, dad takes Sheri to their local minister and tells him what's going on. Not only does this man immediately accept everything he's being told as 100% truth, he cannot wait to begin using this girl's power to convert everyone whether they want to be or not. "Every day God's creation is going to hell and its really starting to piss me off," this man of God angrily states (always nice to have a preacher in the pulpit with a chip on his shoulder walking around thinking the world is such a terrible place, if only someone would come along and smite it) just before laying out a plan for her to go to a local "secular" rock concert to use her powers on the heathens attending. Dad thinks this is a great plan and Sheri, clearly portrayed as an easily manipulated doe-eyed innocent, also thinks this all sounds positively neat-o.

This movie gets so militant with this conceit the minister even has her standing in front of his own congregation using her powers on life-long churchgoers sitting in the pews that just aren't true enough believers. Within days we’re told the rates of local murders, rapes, and kidnappings have gone down at an astronomical rate, Hollywood has begun shelving movies that don't portray acceptable family values, and the porn industry is shutting down as ex-smut peddlers begin devoting their efforts to helping those they've harmed spreading their filth. The ultimate goal is to get Sheri simulcast on every major television network at once so that she can telepathically gang save millions in a single broadcast. And if anyone dares to object or stand in their way, all she has to do is touch them and they're instantly transformed into a Stepford Christian.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is a horror movie, just one with a great big smile on its face that doesn't realize what it truly is. C ME DANCE is exactly like all those bodysnatching horror movies we've seen where someone gets taken over by an evil presence that can infect and impose its evil into anyone it comes into contact with. Sure, it's the power of Christ this time around but that doesn't make it any less sinister in its affront to the very notion of free will. I'm sure many of like mind watching will think what's portrayed on the screen is awesome, but for those of us that don't live in a bubble, it's obvious what's being preached is as misguided as it is ridiculous. None of these people are coming to find Christ on their own; they're not doing so as a decision based out of a deeply held belief or longing; none of these are honest heartfelt conversions. These people are being manipulated via supernatural mind control. She touches them or uses some psychic power to get into their head and - bam - they're instantly born again. People are going to be filled with the Lord's grace; yeah, but not by the own admission, not by their own choosing. Probably fruitless to even argue as much since we all know free will and individual thought are not exactly popular concepts amongst fundamentalists of any particular religious persuasion. As bad a wrap as Christians tend to get, often undeservedly, negatively stereotyping them as simple-minded drones incapable of thinking for themselves, here is a movie that actually embraces that hive mindset and hails it as a great thing. If ever there was a motion picture for which the phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" applied - by God, this is it.

Sheri's climactic world-changing sermon is written and delivered with all the eloquence of a third grader's Sunday school essay and actually has the hypocritical nerve to conclude by telling us how in the end we all have a major choice to make about the way we spend eternity; the height of irony given the power she wields and the way she and those around her have chosen to use it has eliminated any choice in the matter.

I’d have been all the more offended and horrified by the rather mentality of this gleefully inane piece of fundamentalist Christian propaganda if I hadn’t been laughing so hard. As naive as it is earnest, as deluded as it is convinced of its own piety, the lunacy of its tale enough to make you think it were parody if you didn't know the filmmakers were totally sincere. Believe when I tell you there is so much more I could go on about. I’m just going to stop here and summarize C ME DANCE with two simple words:

HOLY CRAP!

THE POPE MUST DIE PART 2: OBI WAN'S REVENGE

Three years ago Dr. Robert Langdon uncovered a secret that angered the Vatican enough to send trained killers after him. Now they need his help. Took hundreds of years to forgive Galileo for correctly theorizing that the Earth revolved around the sun; only took the Vatican three years to get over Dr. Robert Langdon proving Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had kids.

To clarify, the ANGELS & DEMONS book preceded the blockbuster novel THE DA VINCI CODE. Since they made THE DA VINCI CODE into a movie first, the studio decided to rewrite Dan Brown’s first novel as a direct sequel to the movie. The events of the previous film, including the multiple attempts on Langdon’s life, are dismissed by Vatican officials as little more than an unfortunate tiff.

The Pope is dead. The first runners up have been kidnapped. The only clue is the calling card of an ancient enemy with a vow to kill The Vatican's Next Top Pontiff contestants one an hour until the clock strikes midnight when Vatican City will be blown to kingdom come by an antimatter bomb forged from the Hadron Super Collider.

The Illuminati are back and ready to seek their ultimate vengeance hundreds of years after the fact.

This is a job for HIGHLANDER!

No? Certainly sounds like one. Very well then…

This is a job for a symbologist!

Get Tom Hanks on the phone; book him on the next flight to Rome; make certain he dons his finest Steven Seagal black wear and coifs that hair until it looks like a wig stolen from Nicolas Cage's dresser.

Dr. Robert Langdon gets called in because he once wrote a book about the Illuminati and we all know that only a symbologist could crack a case as pressing as this. I’d have still voted HIGHLANDER.

If you're not part of the black helicopter crowd New World Order paranoia or have never heard of Steve Jackson Games, there is an outside chance you’re unfamiliar with the Illuminati. They're a clandestine cabal of scientists that met hundreds of years ago when the Catholic Church considered science the enemy and scientists that presented facts and theories that clash with religious doctrine were tortured and executed. Catholic officials in the movie regard these senseless executions as yet another unfortunate tiff.

This really is the same cavalier attitude that has given the Catholic Church a black eye in lieu of all the child molestation scandals. You know, for a religion that specializes in instilling a sense of guilt in its followers, the church's powerbrokers really could use a little does of their own medicine.

But then Catholics are known for their stubbornness. I assure you. The College of Cardinals, the meeting of top ranking Cardinals from around the world that gather after the death of a Pope to lock themselves in chambers to debate and elect a new Pope, absolutely refuse to evacuate the Vatican even if there is a bomb set to obliterate Vatican City and part of Rome at the stroke of midnight. They'd rather risk certain death than let a terrorist ruin their age old tradition and don't want word to get out to anyone (i.e. the unsuspecting faithful that have gathered by the thousand outside anxiously awaiting to see what color smoke will next emerge from the chimney) about the gravity of the situation.

A quick explanation for those of you not familiar with this Catholic ritual; the secret voting ballots are burned after each vote and mixed with smoke color agent to alert the public. If black smoke pours out of the chimney it means the College of Cardinals did not reach a 2/3rds consensus. If white smoke pours out it means a new Pope has been elected. If black smoke pours out of a smoldering crater that used to be Vatican City it really doesn’t matter by that point.

THE DA VINCI CODE was all about deciphering Where's Waldo?-isms from Da Vinci’s famous paintings. ANGELS & DEMONS is all about interpreting statues scattered throughout the city of Rome that point the way to the hidden location where the Illuminati secretly met right under the Vatican's nose. Each statue was designed to represent a different element of nature (earth, wind, fire, water) and their directional powers combined will reveal the path to the Illuminati’s conclave.

At last, conclusive proof that Captain Planet & the Planeteers were merely puppets of the Illuminati. “Go Planet”, indeed.

A symbologist is a scholar that specializes in identifying and interpreting symbols. How does such a skill translate onto film? Mostly it involves of Tom Hanks looking around until he spots something he can instantaneously interpret as the enigmatic clue he's been looking for and then yelling things along the lines of:

“Look over there!”
"That's it!"
"Wait. I was wrong. It's actually that one!"
"Over here!"
"Look what direction it's pointing in! Go that way!"
"Can someone translate this Italian for me?"

Ron Howard realized that as much as Tom Hank's powers of symbolic deduction keeps viewers on the edge of their seats with nervous anticipation as to what visual clue he'll deduce next, many considered the action in THE DA VINCI CODE a bit too static last time around the action was a bit too static so this time out finding these statues involves plenty of running and driving and power jogging and climbing up and down ladders and skulking about secret passageways. If ANGELS & DEMONS were a video game it would be like all the observational puzzle-solving of MYST that frequently requires the player to begin button mashing running action of the old TRACK & FIELD arcade game.

Despite being a master of symbology and constantly explaining everything to us like a History Channel narrator, Dr. Langdon still needs a cheat guide to figure this one, a cheat guide in the form of a banned book written by Galileo, the only known existing copy of which is locked up within the high tech Vatican archives. Book reading isn’t all the exciting, but attempted murder is. After what has to be the most harrowing hermetically sealed bookcase near suffocation scene in the history of cinema we’re back off and running through the streets of Rome for more of The Amazing Race: Vatican City.

Further adding to the thrill factor is the ever lurking menace of an Illuminati assassin. Unfortunately, this Guy Pearce look-a-like hitman isn’t nearly as colorful as the self-flagellating albino Franciscan monk hitman of THE DA VINCI CODE.

If ever a movie needed a vampire villain… Take this plot to destroy the Vatican, have a vampire hitman working on behalf of the Illuminati; the Catholic Church responds by calling in a HIGHLANDER, but there’s a lot of tension between the two because the Church consider his immortality something they have hard time reconciling with their beliefs. If nothing else, then the ANGELS & DEMONS title might have made a bit more sense than it does here.

Anyway, Not Guy Pearce’s job is to brand each of the kidnapped cardinals with Illuminati symbols and then leave them in the location of one of these statues to die a death correlating to the particular element being represented (i.e. drowned in a fountain, roasted alive, etc).

I was so hoping Ed Exley's stand-in would meet his demise in a branding iron sword fight with Dr. Langdon; instead he'll complete his mission and nearly getaway with it until his getaway vehicle turns out to be a car bomb. Let this be your lesson: never trust a disgruntled Catholic fundamentalist.

All of this Illuminati nonsense proves to be just that - nonsense. That's right! It's all a deception perpetrated by an angry Catholic upset that the Church has become too liberal - too much capitulation to the blasphemies of science, not sending an albino assassin to kill Dan Brown, and other progressive matters that piss off the William Donahue's of the world.

You can tell this movie is based on material that was written before the current Pope was elected, the one that looks like Emperor Palpatine and still believes rock ‘n’ roll is wicked music.

Ewan MacGregor has traded in his Jedi robes for Catholic priest garb to portray Carmerlengo, a relatively young priest who had been serving as the deceased Pope's alter boy-in-chief or some powerful position like that. He murdered the Pope. He orchestrated the kidnappings and executions of the cardinals most likely to be voted into the Papacy. He hired that hitman to do his dirty work and build an antimatter bomb. He used his knowledge of Illuminati lore to make it all look like a conspiracy on the part of a clandestine foe from the Church's past. He did it all as part of his master plan to have himself named as the next Pope in order to erase all that Vatican II crap and take the Catholic Church back to the good ol' dark ages before that Renaissance and Reformation had to come along and ruin everything. And he'd have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for that lousy symbologist and the attractive female antimatter scientist who doesn't really serve much of a purpose other than to tag along with Tom Hanks but without her there wouldn't have been a single female in the cast.

Now comes the part where ANGELS & DEMONS truly becomes ridiculous. Yes. Now - after all the preposterousness that preceded it. What happens next is so silly it’s about one alien or cyborg away from being worthy of a Dr. Who episode.

Carmerlengo discovers the bomb and races out of the Vatican with it; hopping into the AirPope attack chopper conveniently parked right out front the doors amid the sea of devoted that have gathered. The crowd looks on confused as he flies straight up into the clouds. His deception having not yet been revealed to us yet, it would appear he is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of the Lord. Then we see a parachute open as Carmerlengo descends from the clouds. The movie crowd looks up and gasps; the movie audience looks at the screen and cackles. He has set the chopper to keep climbing with the bomb while he parachutes to safety.

Boom! The sky fills with light as the Death Star explodes.

Waves of light fill the sky. Wind-blasting shockwaves are thrash the Vatican and send people ducking for cover. Carmerlengo is sent crashing into the side of the building and floats down from the sky unconscious. As the chaos subsides, he is carried into the Vatican as the crowd applauds the man that fell from the sky to save them. Everyone begins chanting "Carmerlengo! Carmerlengo! Carmerlengo!" This can only mean one of two things: the teeming masses want Ewan MacGregor to be the new Pope or they are all hungry for a delicious Italian fine dining desert.

Come on. Doesn't Carmerlengo sound like an expensive dessert delicacy? At the very least an Italian candy bar. Or possibly a Kama Sutra position. I can’t be the only one that sees that name and thinks this.

By saving the Vatican from the bomb - a bomb that generated a bright light in the sky that is intended to be seen as a sign from God, thus becoming a chosen hero to the teeming masses that all chant his name unison outside the Vatican walls, and with all of the top contenders to inherit the Popemobile either dead or out of commission, Carmerlengo is banking on a wacky Catholic bylaw that states even a Catholic official that hasn't achieved Cardinal status can be elected Pontiff if it is the will of the people.

This absurdist scheme would have succeeded too had it not been for the last second discovery of an entry in a journal the scientist lady had flown in that pretty much points the finger at Carmerlengo as the man behind the antimatter theft. The jig is up. Carmerlengo is exposed and opts to commit suicide in the manner most befitting a protesting monk: self-immolation.

When you stop and think about the plot for even a split second you begin to realize that the events of the last 15-minutes of ANGELS & DEMONS still would have played out and resolved itself almost exactly the same even without the involvement of Dr. Langdon and everything we’d seen him do running around Rome for the past two hours - truly a testament to the writing skills of best selling author Dan Brown and Oscar winning screenwriter Akiva Goldman.

And still I enjoyed watching it more than X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE and TERMINATOR: SALVATION. God bless the power of low expectations.

Action symbologist Dr. Robert Langdon returns later this year in Dan Brown's next Washington D.C. based novel: NATIONAL TREASURE III: THE FREEMASON CODE. Look for it on shelves soon. Look for it on movie screens as soon as Ron Howard and Tom Hanks decide they need another big paycheck.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE TIMELINE