CITY OF ANGELS (45)

Directed by: Brad Silberling

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meg Ryan, Dennis Franz, Andre Braugher

The Pitch: An angel falls in love with a mortal, and chooses to 'fall' - i.e. become human.

Theo Sez: "Based on" WINGS OF DESIRE but in fact a variation on LOVE STORY, that shameless tale of privileged rich boy Giving It All Up for poor-but-spunky girl (you can see the third act coming a mile off) ; or perhaps an inversion of that familiar line from cheap'n treacly romantic fiction (read TITANIC), the heiress who defies her family to elope with the stable-boy. The appeal in all cases is the same - a glamorous dream for young people (well okay, young girls) seeking something they can call Love, a soulful something greater than themselves. This is certainly soulful, sometimes effectively so - the visuals are a bit too slick (the angels praying en masse by the beach, clearly intended as a Magical Image, looks like something out of a car commercial) but, with the ethereal story and Cage's permanently yearning expression, they do conjure up a certain melancholy grandeur ; and there's obvious romantic appeal in the film's injunction to follow our feelings ("You should trust that ; you don't trust it enough"). Trouble is, it seems determined to build a whole castle of self-importance on these frankly sandy foundations - and, more specifically, to burden itself with an overt religious message ("I don't really pray," is the first line we hear ; "People don't believe in us anymore," says one angel to another) : in making its heroine a doctor (a big change from WINGS OF DESIRE) who sees people in medical terms, ignoring God - maybe even, it's implied, playing God - it contrives a contrast between faith and science (doctors fight for people's lives - but who, asks the heroine, are they fighting with?) ; and, in making her also cold and lonely, it has her standing in for the whole misguided, unhappy, secular world. The film might've been subtitled "Wake Up, People : God Is Looking At You Right Now" - but a reassuring God, one who gives you free will and doesn't (apparently) judge you after Death : it's a mealy-mouthed kind of religion, basically a placebo against fear of dying, and it turns a merely slushy film into an annoying one. The limp MOR score is the final insult.