EARLY IN KEVIN Smith's new film, Dogma, George Carlin appears as Cardinal Glick, an enthusiastic cleric looking to draw more people into the Catholic faith. First he announces that passing under the archway at his church will erase the sins of even the most rotten souls. Then he unveils "Buddy Christ," a grinning, winking Jesus he's designed to replace the more common, crucified version, explaining, "Christ didn't come to earth to give us the willies!" Such is the dogma of Dogma, a successful melding of off-color jokes, trash-talking angels, references to John Hughes movies, violence, heaven, and hell on earth into a package that is both sharp, dialogue-driven satire and effects-laden fantasy.

Religion – besides the Force, of course – is a subject previously untapped by Smith. He built a rabid fan base with Clerks, tempered his rep slightly with the so-so Mallrats, and rebounded with Chasing Amy, all films about buddies and girlfriends and comic books. With Dogma, a film Smith wrote around the same time as Clerks, he matches his trademark style of talky humor with his most complex plot and characters to date.

Linda Fiorentino stars as Bethany, a world-weary abortion clinic worker who wakes up one night to witness an angel's fiery entrance. Metatron (Alan Rickman), as he's known, charges Bethany with a holy crusade: stop a couple of fallen angels, Bartleby and Loki, from entering Glick's New Jersey church. Seems that if they strip away their sins, they'll be able to get back into heaven – a loophole in God's plan that, if exploited, will negate all existence. These consequences don't fully register with the angels, played by real-life good will hunters Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Damon, as Loki, used to be the angel of death, until Affleck's Bartleby convinced him that wreaking genocide just wasn't, like, a cool job description. Subsequently cast out of heaven, the pair has spent the last thousand years milling around Wisconsin. They're painfully tired of humankind and are determined to return home.

With this conflict in place, a most unconventional road movie begins unfolding. Bethany reluctantly teams up with two "prophets," Smith stalwarts Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith). Along the yellow brick road to Jersey the group meets Rufus (Chris Rock), who claims he's the 13th apostle who's supposed to be in the Bible, and Serendipity (Salma Hayek), a muse with writer's block.

Meanwhile, there's something sinister going down with Azrael (Jason Lee), a demon who lurks in the background with a mini-army of pint-size street-hockey players and the ability to conjure creatures made of excrement. At the same time, Loki and Bartleby are making the most of their last few days on earth by annihilating "commandment breakers" right and left. They crash a meeting of burger joint executives who have turned the company mascot, Mooby the Golden Calf, into a false idol. Much carnage ensues.

Mooby's resemblance to Mickey Mouse may be one reason Miramax, which is owned by Disney, balked at distributing the film, though the trench-coated, gun-wielding angels and the prickly take on religion surely were factors as well. To protect Disney from controversy, Miramax honchos Bob and Harvey Weinstein used their own money to buy the film and sold it to Lion's Gate to distribute. Conservative groups like the Catholic League have Dogma in their sights – just check the film's Web site, www.dogma-movie.com for the bilious Hate Letter section. Though certain parts of the film, taken out of context, might seem sacrilegious, Smith himself has remarked, "How seriously can you take a movie that has a rubber poop monster in it?"

Indeed. Mixing nods at the Incredible Hulk, Krush Groove, Indiana Jones, Chewbacca, Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, and other universal tenants of pop culture with angel wings, hellfire, and the apocalypse makes perfect sense within this fantasy. It's to Smith's credit that he manages to balance adolescent yuks with a message about the importance of faith – ambitious, and unlikely, but it works. And anyway, who's to say that angels aren't complicated, emotional beings that make mistakes? That a cardinal wouldn't try to lure converts with a "Catholicism – Wow!" campaign? Or that God wouldn't sneak down to earth just to play Skeeball? Folks who cry blasphemy at Dogma are missing the two traits this film best exemplifies: imagination and a sense of humor.