Dogma (1999)

Dogma (1999)

6/10

Starring

Ben Affleck

Matt Damon

Linda Fiorentino

Directed by Kevin Smith

Dogma is a comedic religious movie that takes blasphemy by the tail and spins it as much as it can. The whole idea of this movie will make any religious person sick, but the concept and some of the ideas placed into the making of this movie is worth cheering.

Kevin Smith to me has not been one of the best film makers out there, in fact he would not fall into the list of my average film makers. He has found a way to make movies with the littlest of effort I might say, and for that I appreciate some of his work and loath the rest.

Dogma, for its part has a great cast all joined together to make this movie memorable. The other sad part about this movie is the way the comedy will just fail at some point. The movie has an uneven flow which is very apparent. The acting on the other hand by the cast can be said to be done by some highly committed crew.

The story is about two fallen angels who decided that they were fed up with life on Earth. The reason they are on earth is same to the reason Lucifer was casted out, the rebelled. Unlike Lucifer who took the rebellion to mean to go up against God and overthrow him, here their case is disobedience. These angels are Bartleby (Ben Affleck) and Loki (Matt Damon) eternally banished from heaven to Wisconsin for insubordination.

Both have been on the Earth for more than a millennium when they get a message, which gave them an idea of how to get back into heaven.

The biggest challenge to these angel’s plan is that by getting back into heaven they undo what God has already done. Now God is infallible, so undoing what he has done will make the entire existence non-existence. But these angels do not care, all they want is to get back into heaven.

God’s presence is unknown and therefore not on hand to stop these two from rendering existence, inexistence. In order to stop them Metatron (a seraph / the voice of God played by Alan Rickman) went to meet Bethany and told her she has the job to save the universe. Her only aid are a prophet pair of Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob(Kevin Smith).

To join their quest, they have Rufus (Chris Rock) the thirteenth Apostle and Serendipity a muse (Salma Hayek).

They must stop these angels while Azrael (Jason Lee) is against their quest. The movie has a lot of funny twist and turns which by saying them will turn this review to a spoiler. If you like crazy fantasy ideas about religion and blasphemy is not a turn off to you, this is a movie to see.