Bad angels hunting for heavenly loopholes

by James Verniere

If the prospect of a funny, potty-mouthed boy misbehaving in church strikes you as sacrilegious, I advise you to steer clear of ``Dogma.'' If it strikes you as probably juvenile, but also potentially amusing, you might want to see for yourself.

Kevin Smith's ``Dogma'' generated debate before anyone saw it. Its producer and original distributor, Disney-owned Miramax Pictures, had a change of heart and sold it off. The film turns out to be too sophomoric to take very seriously.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, the dynamic duo of ``Good Will Hunting,'' play a pair of renegade angels in a style so laid back they seem to be breathing ether.

Damon is the motor-mouthed Loki, also known as the Angel of Death, a seraphim who used to wreak God's vengeance on the world and now hangs around a Wisconsin airport tricking a nun into losing her faith. Affleck is Bartleby, the more sedate of the two.

Their problem is they have been banished from heaven. But they have a scheme. If they can receive a plenary indulgence from the Church, they will have to be allowed to re-enter paradise. The only problem is: If they do, they will destroy the fabric of the universe because they will have ``proved God wrong.''

Smith, whose previous films include ``Clerks,'' ``Mallrats,'' and ``Chasing Amy,'' should leave theology to others. Reportedly a devout Catholic, Smith is hardly the Salman Rushdie of Roman Catholicism. He's more like the sort of pest who demanded his catechism teacher explain just how Adam and Eve's children could marry anyone if the only other people who existed at the time were their brothers and sisters.

The film begins quite amusingly with a disclaimer in which the platypus is cited as proof of God's sense of humor followed by an apology offered to platypus partisans. It's also undeniably amusing that the latest showdown in the eternal struggle between good and evil should take place in and around Asbury Park, N.J. (Does this make Bruce Springsteen the Antichrist?), where a middle-aged man (Bud Cort) is beaten almost to death by a trio of hockey-stick-wielding skaters suffering from either demonic possession or too much Ritalin and Doom.

Meanwhile, in nearby Red Bank, an effusive Cardinal Glick (a quite funny George Carlin) is kicking off his new ``Catholicism Wow!'' campaign. After retiring the crucifix as a ``wholly depressing'' symbol, the cardinal unveils the statue of the campaign's new figurehead, the ``Buddy Christ,'' a kind of Christian Camel Joe flashing worshipers the thumbs-up sign.

Like Smith's other work, the ``Dogma'' script, which he wrote before ``Clerks,'' has plot, dialogue and characters to spare. His hyperactive style relies heavily on weirdly funny juxtaposition and outrageously vulgar dialogue. At their best, his verbal exercises are pyrotechnical, at worst, logorrheic.

The plot of ``Dogma'' thickens when Bethany (a wry Linda Fiorentino), a Chicago woman experiencing a crisis of faith, is visited by a dyspeptic, tequila-swilling angel named Metatron (Alan Rickman). After getting doused with a fire extinguisher and proving to Bethany he has no genitals, Metatron tells the young woman to take a journey to New Jersey and expect to meet an apostle and a couple of prophets along the way.

The latter turns out to be Rufus (Chris Rock), an angry, 2,000-year-old man who falls out of the sky and is convinced he's been overlooked by the Church because he is black.

The former are Smith's New Age Abbott and Costello, Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith). Also met along the way are a stripper who turns out to be a heavenly Muse (Salma Hayek instead of Sharon Stone), a gun-packing demon named Azrael (Jason Lee of ``Chasing Amy'') and a ``poop monster.''

A film as chock full of incident as ``Dogma'' is bound to be amusing at least some of the time, and it is. But it's much less entertaining and outrageously irreverent than ``South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,'' which ``Dogma'' resembles in some ways. And by the time Alanis Morissette shows up as God, you may think Smith has suddenly gone all PC on us and we've wandered into the Lilith Fair.