Clipped wings
"Dogma" skewers religion with a few witty bits, but is amateurish overall

Verdict: C+

The lowdown: It's got laughs, but this fable about angels, prophets and the potential extermination of all existence is told in a flabby, talky fashion that extends it way past what would seem its ideal running time. You may have heard it's blasphemous, and it probably is, but that's not nearly its biggest problem.

By Shawn Levy of The Oregonian staff

There's something for everyone in "Dogma" -- and still it isn't much of a picture.

There's stuff for people who want to see organized religion brutally skewered and stuff for people who see in popular culture irrefutable proof of the imminent arrival of divine wrath.

There's stuff for fans of crude (and often hysterical) comedy and for fans of fantasy fables, however intermittently clever.

There is good acting and rich comic performance -- and Ben Affleck is in it, too.

But like the other works of writer-director Kevin Smith ("Clerks," "Mallrats," "Chasing Amy"), "Dogma" is better in its particulars than as a whole. Smith is a quintessential wisenheimer, a deadpan class clown with an ear for guyish banter. But he's more a portraitist -- a caricaturist, actually -- than a storyteller. That he's besotted with comic books and Hollywood pop movies isn't necessarily a strike against him, but his work often feels excessively informed by such streamlined, clich-drenched models.

In "Dogma," Smith breaks out of his routine of depicting the sexual and career foibles of mouthy twentysomethings, which is a good thing. But in its place he takes on an epic story structure and a subject matter sure to invite a hell storm of righteous outrage.

A fable about the failings of the Catholic Church, the film involves an excessively worldly cardinal, a pair of conniving fallen angels, an unlikely group of super-ish heroes and the possible extermination of all existence, human and divine.

The film is dotted with real laughs and held together by some solid acting, but it's built of a fairly flaccid narrative and some really amateurish sequences. It's surprisingly knowledgeable about details of religion, but it feels like the work of a too-clever high-schooler funning with his catechism. Aesthetically that doesn't matter, but it does mean that the film earns some of the censure it has incurred from religious groups. Bottom line: If you believe, "Dogma" will offend.

Matt Damon plays Loki, erstwhile razer of Sodom and Gomorrah, inflicter of the 10 plagues on Egypt -- a punk doing the Lord's good work. That, though, was the old Loki. These days, along with his chum Bartleby (Affleck), Loki has been expelled from heaven for insubordination and doomed to life on Earth (Wisconsin, actually).

When a New Jersey cardinal (George Carlin) declares he is reinstituting the indulgence system as a means of making the church exciting again, the pair of angels recognize a loophole that will let them go home: They'll be forgiven their sins, they'll make themselves mortal and when they die, they'll rise.

Good plan, but according to the voice of God (delivered by a messenger played with great wit by Alan Rickman), if Loki and Bartleby.

To stop the angels, a ragtag assemblage of heroes is assembled: an abortionist from Illinois whose faith is wobbling (Linda Fiorentino), a pair of witless stoners from out of the director's past (Jason Mewes and Smith himself), the 13th apostle (Chris Rock, very, very funny), a muse (huh? Salma Hayek) and, ultimately, the Lord God, um, herself (Alanis Morissette, quite fetchingly).

Many silly battles and confrontations ensue, interrupted with long speeches in which the plot is spelled out explicitly again and again for Fiorentino's benefit. It all builds to a bloody, ineptly staged climax.

Along its irreligious way, "Dogma" often is funny but often very dumb -- a bar fight with a monster from the depths is just awful. On the plus side it's got the strong supporting work of Rock, Rickman, Mewes and Jason Lee, all of whom dive into their characters with wit. On the minus, Fiorentino is wan, helpless and always confused, and Smith's silent mugging bit has grown very, very old.

Special opprobrium must be saved, though, for Affleck, a graduate, apparently, of the Ernest Borgnine School of Eager Mugging; no matter what the film, the character or the putative emotion, this guy always comes off as a young snot who wants to play the lead in the prep-school spring play in the worst way. Yuck.

The real problem with "Dogma," finally, is not that it has the audacity to toy with blasphemy in order to create a comic parable about holy themes. The real problem is that it's sloppy, indulgent and childish, even if it evokes occasional chuckles.