Postmodern Paradigm? Pure Power Pop?

Anti-Matter Vatican What???

Dan Brown's Angels and Demons (2009): adapted from the novel by Dan Brown by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman; directed by Ron Howard; starring Tom Hanks (Robert Langdon), Ewan McGregor (Chief Pope's Dogsbody McKenna), Ayelet Zurer (Woman Who Knows All Things That Langdon Does Not Know Especially Italian, The Map of Vatican City, Anti-Matter, and Whatever The Hell Bio-ub-Nuclear-Physics Is), Stellan Skarsgard (Swiss Stellan Skarsgard), Nikolaj Kaas (The Non-Albino Albino), and Armin Mueller-Stahl (Suspicious Red Herring Cardinal):

Pure postmodern power pop!

In The DaVinci Code, Harvard Symbologist (not an actual thing)  Robert Langdon battled a conspiracy that hides the true nature of the relationship of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. The conspiracy was dangerous because, um, it might hurt the great-to-the-Nth-power-child of Mary and Jesus. 

Wait, were the stakes that low in The DaVinci Code?

But now, in a tactic ripped from the escalatingly epic pulp space operas of EE "Doc" Smith, Langdon returns to battle a conspiracy that intends to kill all the popes and blow up Vatican City with an Anti-Matter Bomb stolen by The Last Illuminati from the Anti-Matter-Bomb-Making facilities at the Large Hadron Collider in Poussy, France.

Anti-Matter Bomb? WTF?

Angels & Demons is enjoyable nonsense. Tom Hanks looks a lot more relaxed than he did in The DaVinci Code. He runs around Vatican City trying to save the four most likely candidates for Pope because he knows more than anyone about Italian things even though he still cannot speak or read Italian despite Italian things being the focus of 90% of his academic studies and 97% of his exciting adventures.

Tom Hanks is joined in his awesome world-saving adventures by an Italian biosphere genetic astrophysicist who knows everything about Vatican City, the history of the Popes, and Anti-Matter. 

Jesus, these people have weird fucking skill-sets!

The only thing that would make Angels&Demons the greatest movie ever made about anti-Catholic conspiracies deploying Anti-Matter Bombs against the Vatican only to be thwarted by an Italian woman with a crazy skill-set, Forrest Gump, and a young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) would be if the self-flagellating, Opus Dei-serving, super-Albino super-assassin (Paul "The Vision" Bettany) showed up to turn over a new leaf like Jaws at the end of James Bond in Moonraker and help Langdon, Robert Langdon save the Vatican. Highly recommended!