I was really looking forward to seeing Kevin Smith's new film Dogma, but after watching it the only thing I can compare it with is taking an incredibly involved dump. Both are long and painful events that encompass a few fleeting moments of intense pleasure making you think you've seen God, but in the end, all you're left with is a funny looking turd.

Our story finds pretty-boys, dynamic-duo Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as two angels (Loki and Bartleby) who've been tossed out of heaven for plotting against God and condemned to serve a life sentence in a place more frightening than any death row: Wisconsin. A modern-day press conference by one Cardinal Glick (the great George Carlin) inadvertently provides the boys with a back door into paradise when he proclaims that anyone who enters his New Jersey cathedral will have their souls wiped clean of sin and be granted admission into heaven. What the Cardinal doesn't know, however, is that if these fallen angels use this loophole in church dogma to return against God's wishes, it'll bring about an end to humanity as we know it.

Linda Fiorentino as Bethany Sloan

Linda Fiorentino plays Bethany, a lapsed Catholic working in an abortion clinic who's searching for a sense of purpose in her life. She's soon given one via divine intervention as God sends his messenger Metatron (Alan Rickman) to inform her she's been chosen to save the human race and stop Loki and Bartleby from passing through the doors of that church. Aiding and abetting her on this mission are Jay and Silent Bob (recurring characters in all of Kevin Smith's movies) who provide Bethany with safe passage and, moreover, comic relief on her pilgrimage to the Garden State.

En route, they run into Rufus (Chris Rock), Jesus's 13th Apostle who was written out of the Bible because he's black. After falling naked out of the sky ala "The Brother from Another Planet," Rufus joins the rag-tag group and takes them to a strip club where Salma Hayek also makes a jaw-dropping entrance. Dancing in just her pigtails, bra and panties, the scene itself almost makes the movie worth the price of admission. Beyond that, though, her character Serendipity (a creative Muse) doesn't contribute much to the movie, except to befuddle you as to why a Greek muse is in a movie about Catholicism and why she is wearing a Hindu dot on her head throughout the film. Nevertheless, she decides to cruise with our holy crusaders on the indie "Cannonball Run" which ensues, as Linda Fiorentino's celebrity rat pack races to get to the church before the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck characters.

I won't spoil the ending, except to say that the apocalyptic carnage at the finale is extremely well done and a breathtaking shot. Good as it is, though, it doesn't outweigh the myriad defects hardwired into this movie. As is always the case with Kevin Smith's films (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy), he's way too heavy handed in the dialogue department. His writing is funny, but more often than not, the wording is fat and the style is just plain stilted and self-indulgent. Characters don't converse as much as unleash speeches upon one another, sometimes choking on the dense, composition-like phrases. It's almost as if he's trying to jam in every single Catholic question and idea he's struggled with since he was eleven attending St. Margaret of the Perpetual Flagellation Elementary School. If you're getting paid by the word it'd be one thing, but dude, let your characters take a breather every once in a while and let some drama in. You can often say more with a pause and a look than with an entire monologue.

This problem was especially true of his first film Clerks (1994), an amazing flick despite its flaws, because his sense of humor and boldness transcended his obvious lack of monetary budget and experience. Unfortunately, as a director and screenwriter, he has shown about as much artistic growth as a bonsai tree since then. He's the same old guy, way too obsessed with comic books and past girlfriends cheating on him, except now, he has got a butt-load more money to slap it up on the screen with.

Perhaps the most odd thing about Dogma is that its distribution deal was originally dropped by Disney-owned Miramax because of pressure from the Catholic Church. Quite frankly, I find "Touched By an Angel" to be more offensive in its cutesy, simpletonian answers to life's major problems than Dogma's slapstick blasphemy. Despite his aspirations, Kevin Smith's work can't measure up to Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) as a comedic commentary on the absurdity of religion. That movie was deserving of all the uproar it provoked because it really did have the balls to question our utter gullibility and blind faith in a religious ideal we know absolutely nothing about nor have any physical proof of. For that matter, Oh God (starring George Burns and the late, great John Denver) shook my religious belief system more than this movie did.

I will give Smith props for casting George Carlin and Chris Rock. They totally steal every scene they're in, as does Jason Mewes of Jay and Silent Bob.

By now, it's no secret that Alanis Morissette portrays God in Dogma and while I think it's pretty hilarious casting a "Canadian" as the Supreme Being, a far more inspired and infinitely more humorous choice would've been if Smith hired Don Knotts to play God. Or better yet, if at the film's climax, God was revealed to be that crazy homeless guy I saw on the subway last month cursing like Redd Foxx with Tourette's Syndrome. Now that's what I call sacrilege.