I’m not going to review “Angels & Demons.”  Sometimes the idea of tearing a film apart just doesn’t quite appeal to me, believe it or not.  But watching the expected unfold on the Sony lot last night, it suddenly occurred to me that Dan Brown’s bloated if intriguingly researched fiction has no place on the big screen.  It might, in fact, be better suited to television.

Think about it.  A show like “24″ (which is compelling this season for the first time in three years) milks every close call for what it’s worth.  Each tick of the final episode clock mixes with the soaring brass of the score, all but announcing: “Tune in next week, same Bauer time, same Bauer channel.”  And that’s what a Brown adaptation feels like.  Except the effect is exhausting in a two-hour span of time.  The conduit of cinema simply doesn’t support it.

One could go back and forth on the issue of quality all day long.  Those championing the thrill ride experience would be equally justified in their assessment as those who find their foreheads red from constant smacking at the amount of regurgitated exposition (which seems to be an unfortunate necessity in these films).  But the breadth of the episodic could make a story like “The Da Vinci Code” or “Angels & Demons” sing.  Brown, a masterful storyteller in that can’t-put-it-down kind of way, could make every carefully plotted (some would say contrived) set piece or dramatic beat count within the consistent ups and downs of a television series or mini-series.  And theatrical audiences worldwide would be spared the headache of trying to keep up for too brief a time in a darkened room.

I’m certainly no studio or network head, so what do I know?  “The Da Vinci Code” pulled in bucketloads of money across the globe and made Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and the lot much richer people.  Though I don’t expect “Angels & Demons” to have the same success (not as immediately recognizable from a pop culture standpoint, regardless of the sequel factor), I also don’t expect “Digital Fortress” and “Deception Point” to go unfilmed forever.  Ditto the upcoming “The Lost Symbol” (which will probably finds its way to screens first, completing the Robert Langdon trilogy).  But I think there’s an alternative to cinema worth exploring with Brown’s work.

It might rescue the material from being panned outright, if nothing else.

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