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Main Players: Nicholas Cage, Meg Ryan, Dennis Franz, Andre Braugher

Story: An angel falls in love and contemplates becoming human.

Comment: Invariably all movies about angels would be compared with It's a Wonderful Life and City of Angels is no exception. How does it measure up?  Not too good. The movie suffers from glacially slow pacing punctuated by lousy music and uninspired dialogue. It's only redeeming quality must be the 4 actors who salvage whatever interest is left in the audience after the long camera shots of angels standing on top of buildings, on top of construction sites, on top of bridges, ... get the idea?

Much can be said about the angels portrayed in this movie. Unlike the usual "Touched By An Angel" type of angel, we have angels who read a lot and talk a lot. They have desires and ambition but are trapped in a dead end job - which is all they seem to do here: counsel and escort the dead to who knows where, we are not told. They look sombre and have a daily ritual of 'listening' to the sun rise.

What really brings down this movie is it's terrible screenplay and equally boring music. The mood is just too "tiring". After about an hour and 50 minutes, that's what I felt like: Tired and uninterested. You just don't connect with the characters, maybe just the concept of angels that they're trying to sell. Setting it in Los Angeles, to me, is just a cheap gimmick to give some meaning to the nonsensical title.

The only thing worth seeing is the 4 actors. All of them are being the themselves, their normal selves we remember so well. It's truly a waste of fine actors to allow them to participate in such a half-baked film.

Review:  If you have the time, and do not have another 'date movie', then by all means, go for it. But don't expect anything after the movie ends. You'd forget it soon enough.

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