Following on from The Da Vinci Code, in Angels and Demons Ron Howard brings another adaptation of a Dan Brown novel to the screen, starring Tom Hanks reprising his role as symbologist Robert Langdon. Here he is brought over by the Vatican because the Pope has died, they're about to elect a new one and they are receiving threats from "The Illuminati" after some anti-matter has been stolen and could be used as a weapon.
The previous film was one of the most pretentious in recent memory, taking such a risible subject matter and treating it with grave seriousness, and brought about a marriage of an incredibly condescending tone (pointing everything out to the audience) and utterly transparent screenwriting techniques. This is more of the same, but a bit less. The main twist in the film is transparent but it's not consistently so, it does condescend and make sure the viewer only has to use 1% of their IQ but it's not quite as full of its own self importance as the previous entry.
Hanks does a solid job, but all Ayelet Zurer as his sidekick has to do is repeat every foreign sounding thing he says in English. This is emblematic of the film, one person will say something, then someone else will either clarify what that is for the people with no brains or ask to have it explained to them. That it is usually an Italian-speaking character continually spelling out the simplified English version is quite hilarious. One of the funniest moments was having someone from the Vatican, who just used the word "erudite" naturally in a sentence, not be able to figure out the English for "formidable".
The casting director has done a very good job though, Nikolaj Lie Kaas is a familiar face for fans of Danish cinema and Thure Lindhart pops up, minus the red hair he sported in Flame and Citron. In Ewan McGregor, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Stellan Skarsgard you're always going to have more than solid support, with McGregor the pick of the bunch. What this film has that The Da Vinci Code lacked is a sense of ridiculousness which is fun rather than eye-rolling and it must be down to them hiring David Koepp to rewrite the embarrassing Akiva Goldsman's screenplay (the man wrote Batman and Robin and Lost in Space then won an oscar 
). So while this is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, it's watchably bad and as such should not necessarily be avoided at all costs. Just don't watch it alone and have a giggle all the way through though.