Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks, middle) must solve a murder and prevent an attack on the Vatican in the Ron Howard thriller Angels & Demons. (Zade Rosenthal/Sony Pictures)

Peppy and preposterous, Angels & Demons is in a sweaty sprint to distance itself from the lackadaisical adaptation of that book The Da Vinci Code – heard of it? Psst, allow me to also recommend a furniture store: Ikea. For clothes, try Gap. That's G-A-P.

There's more vigour in 10 minutes of Angels & Demons than in all of The Da Vinci Code.

Which is to say, in this era of niche marketing, there aren't that many mass cultural experiences outside of shopping. Those blockbuster days when everyone saw the same movie (Jaws) and bought the same album (Fleetwood Mac's Rumours) don't happen as often as they used to. If Dan Brown's religio-thrillers get people reading and engaged in some kind of shared experience, does the silliness of the subject matter matter?

It did on screen. The Da Vinci adaptation was critically slaughtered as Holy/Wholly Tedium, slapped together with all the laziness of a sure thing. The goofy DNA of Brown's particular Catholic conspiracy theories emerged fully formed in the multiplex light somehow, and all the fun of the franchise evaporated. Of course, it didn't matter: the lethargic film earned millions, even if it's hard to find anyone, critic or no, who really loved it.

Angels & Demons, based on an earlier Brown book but set up in the film as a sequel, tries harder, and it pays off. Tom Hanks – trimmer of torso and hair – is back as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, summoned from a Cambridge swimming pool by Vatican police. That he flies to Rome on a private jet is one of many details coalescing into an image of the Vatican as a superhero headquarters, or Q's gadget-filled lair. In the parlance of such cartoons, Langdon is the former enemy of desperate Catholic superfriends who reluctantly call him in to help out with a villain even they can't vanquish!

Cardinal Strauss (Armin Mueller-Stahl, left) and Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) face a threat against the Vatican in Angels & Demons. (Zade Rosenthal/Sony Pictures)

The College of Cardinals is in the Vatican to select a new pope, but the four front-runners have been kidnapped. According to communiqués, each will be killed on the hour, every hour, starting tonight. Then the evening will be capped by a cataclysmic explosion, courtesy of a vial of "anti-matter" stolen from a lab in Geneva. The party planners are the Illuminati, an ancient pro-science sect long ago banished by the church, who remain at the forefront of Langdon's research.

"Oh great, the symbologist is here," sneers the head of the Swiss Guard, played by Stellan Skarsgård. This devout protector of the Vatican claims his anti-Langdon huffing stems from the professor's refusal to align with any religion, but it sounds more like a taunt to a mega-nerd who never shuts up.

The professor is a historical know-it-all, lecturing at every turn on Bernini, bas-relief, the use of oxygen in archives. (But never pizza. Why, in Rome, can't he give us just one little arcane tidbit about pizza?) Hanks is his usual jocular self, though he's not so much acting as reciting from a dense script by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, who take many liberties with the book. Langdon's logorrhea is absorbed by a fetching Italian physicist, played by Israeli actor Ayelet Zurer, who's often at his side. She's there to assuage her guilt over having invented the anti-matter, with its "God-like power" to create and destroy. There will be no lingering on her moral crisis however; this smart, alert performer is just the vacuum into which Hanks spews religious ephemera.

And yet, if one can exercise selective hearing, there's an energetic movie underneath the unceasing exposition. Director Ron Howard gets to play on the world's best set, Rome, and though he wasn't allowed in the Vatican, the recreation (or creation) is lush and velveteen, elegantly creepy with shadowy corridors and heavy curtains perfect for hidden whispers.

From left, Langdon (Tom Hanks), Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), Chartrand (Thure Lindhart) and Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) discover a time bomb intended to destroy the Vatican. (Zade Rosenthal/Sony Pictures)

Howard must have been reading up on tent-pole movies, and he trucks through the requisite chases and hero-in-peril sequences. There's more vigour in 10 minutes of Angels & Demons than in all of The Da Vinci Code, but that's a little like saying, Tom Hanks is really tall compared to Michael J. Fox. Langdon races around Rome with the clock ticking, trying to put together the mystery of the Illuminati. It's like Blue's Clues meets 24 — with popes!

Offering moral support from the Vatican is Carmelengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), a young priest raised by the deceased pope who has a mind to bring the church into the present. But first, there's this issue of cardinals being killed with all the esthetic fanciness of Se7en and The Cell. It's odd to watch Hanks and Howard in proximity to the distasteful torture porn that now defines the serial killer genre, in the kind of movie where the director seems to be rubbing his hands together as he asks: How creatively can we kill these people? How beautiful can we make it look?

This is not Howard's forte. Whatever one thinks of Howard as a director – too slick or charmingly optimistic – it's probably not "dark," and the gore in Angels & Demons feels awkward, ineffectual. Maybe our expectations are just too fixed, or the material is too ridiculous, but while Angels & Demons is often exuberant, it's never really terrifying. It's remarkable that the stakes – the end of 1) the world and 2) faith – feel very low.

The Catholic Church has de-knotted its panties over this second effort, with a recent review from the Vatican paper praising the movie. For those fearing offence, Angels & Demons is not an indictment of the Catholic Church, but a plea for reformation, a push towards openness and a reunion with science. It's a worthy message trapped in a risible, diverting film that's entirely free of revelations.

Angels & Demons opens May 15.

Katrina Onstad is the film columnist for CBCNews.ca.