Movie Review: 'Dogma' Offends on Many Counts

"Dogma" proves that good people can make a bad movie.

Filmmaker Kevin Smith has made some offbeat and very good films. "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy" were quirky charmers, and "Mallrats" wasn't bad. He employs an acting company, with the same people playing similar roles or even the same characters. Smith himself appears frequently as the quiet half of a comedy duo in these films.

The usual suspects show up again - and a goodly lot they are: Ben Affleck and his buddy Matt Damon, plus Jason Lee and Jason Mewes (Jay to Smith's Silent Bob in four Smith films). Add to these regulars comedians Chris Rock, Janeane Garofalo and George Carlin, British character actor Alan Rickman, prize-winning actress Linda Fiorentino and sultry Salma Hayek, and you have quite a cast.

Unfortunately, Smith's script - about two angels trying to get back to heaven - is deadly bad. He should have taken a page from Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire," a mildly profane but charming and enormously entertaining angel fantasy set in Berlin (1988).

Smith, who says he is a practicing Catholic, manages to offend the Catholic Church frequently in this movie and to offer a few moments that can only be regarded as blasphemous (God is portrayed as an attractive woman who inoffensively kisses Jay in one scene - inspiring him to admit he was sexually aroused). The two angels (Damon and Affleck, who else?) are Loki, the angel of death, and Bartleby, his sidekick, a fallen angel. In the overly complicated script - and in Smith's weird theology - they are trying a back-door entry into heaven by getting a plenary indulgence offered by the pope for those passing through the portal of a church in New Jersey. Exiled in Wisconsin, they begin a journey to the East Coast, falling in with Bethany (Fiorentino), a pro-choice Catholic who has lost her faith, and Jay and Silent Bob, who are regarded in the film as prophets.

They will all have run-ins with Rickman's character, a good angel; with Rock's character, a former apostle of Jesus Christ; with a muse (Hayek); and with a spiffy demon (Lee).

If you think Smith is treading on dangerous ground here, you are right.

The angels kill people, many people; the prophets are outrageously profane; the apostle is a cutup; the demon is a demon; and the local archbishop is a snake-oil salesman type, as interpreted by Carlin and the script.

"Dogma" drags on seemingly forever, quickly losing its initial whimsy. Realistic violence and endless profanity drag this fantasy down until, dead-weighted, it expires long before its final scene. Fiorentino, a fine actress, is here completely out of her depth, looking bored and fatuous in the many reaction shots Smith has fashioned for her.

"Dogma" succeeds neither as fantasy nor comedy. Rent "Angels of Desire." You'll have a better time.