Dogma is a film about two fallen angels who pithily lament their twentysomething lives while working in adjacent video and convenience stores.

No, wait.

Dogma is the story of two fallen angels who must sabotage a game show in a local shopping mall in order to win back their girlfriends while all the while pithily lamenting their twentysomething lives.

No no no...

Dogma is the story of a fallen angel who meets a pithy twentysomething lesbian and...

Okay, all right, forget it.

Dogma isn't any of these things, and as such it fits into the library of Kevin Smith films to date like an onion ring in a basket of french fries. You don't question its right to be there, but it's so different in size, shape and taste that you're going to freak out if you put it in your mouth without looking.

It's like if Star Trek IV had been a stage musical. To jump from mundane and realistic to adventuresome and supernatural was just such a radical departure from the established Kevin Smith canon that watching it gave me a strange sensation like I was wearing my underwear backwards.

That is not to say that Dogma was a bad thing. As you can tell by the five chainsaws in a bunch seen above, I loved this movie. I loved all of Kevin Smith's other movies too. Hell, I even loved MALLRATS. I noticed the trailer to Dogma boasted only, "From the creators of Clerks and Chasing Amy." Was I the only one in the world who actually liked Mallrats? I have a copy of the video. Really. I swear to God.

And unlike the Smith movies before, Dogma is all about swearing to God. (Or something. I thought it would be a nice segue, but I was wrong.)

Dogma is actually the story of two hunky angels (played by those knuckleknobs from Good Will Hunting) who have been banished from Heaven by God for being uppity. After thousands of years of being stuck on Earth (Wisconsin, specifically), the two guys find a possible way back into Heaven through a loophole in the rulebook that God hadn't foreseen.

Of course, God not foreseeing something is also against the rules and thus their success would prove His fallibility in the whole "Could God make a tub of cottage cheese so large that He Himself could not lift it?" way.

And proof of God's fallibility would, of course, spell the end of the universe as we know it in the whole Back to the Future see-yourself-and-destroy-the-continuum time paradox way.

No, I take that back. It would probably be more like the whole Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy "creation of the Babel fish - proof denies faith - and disappears in a puff of logic" way.

Actually, I'm not sure I understand in exactly what way God being wrong would destroy the universe, but you've got to believe that it would, if for no reason other than Alan Rickman says it will. His word is good enough for me. He could tell me that my left foot is a cabbage and I'd believe him. He's very good.

From here a grand scale, cross-country theologistic adventure begins.

For most of the movie I had this weird feeling of having Agent Scully as a Sunday School teacher. You know how Scully will come up with a logical medical explanation why somebody might have what appear to be anal probe burns and then will rattle off a page and a half of dialogue while staring blankly, slightly to the left of the camera? Whenever a new character or concept was introduced in Dogma, somebody went into Scully mode to explain them.

"What the Hell is he talking about? Snoochie boochies."

"You stupid git, he's talking about the Almiragulch Monkey Blight in the Book of Fish 1:32-14 which chronicles the rise and fall of the wicked King Wanktitter who made his people work and die in the radish fields until he was dismembered and devoured by flying monkeys from Heaven."

And the thing is, not being as well versed in the Bible as I am in say, Herman's Head trivia, I really had no idea what was really in the Book and what wasn't. Heck, as I'm writing this, I'm not even sure what gets capitalized and what doesn't. I suspect I'm being liberal with the upper cases, but I wouldn't want to offend.

For example, take Matt Damon's character, Loki. Wasn't Loki the Norse God of Mischief from The Mask? Is Matt Damon supposed to be the same guy? When Jim Carrey puts on the faceplate and becomes that wacky, fun loving zero-to-hero, is he channeling the energy of the guy who is sent to do God's smiting? Probably not, I can't picture anybody in the Bible saying, "Our love is like a red red rose... and I'm feelin' a little thorny."

But at the same time, I suspect that if supplemented with a debriefing by a qualified religious instructor this movie could actually cause some "Catholicism WOW!" style interest in the word of God. But what the Hell do I know. All I can say is that I haven't been this fascinated by the faith since I saw Prince of Egypt, and Salma Hayek wasn't even in that.

I think that, despite the protest lines, Kevin Smith did a brilliant job creating a movie that brings religion to us heathens. I thought it was thoroughly entertaining and respectful to the faithful without being preachy. I highly recommend it.

If Alanis Morissette is God, then who's Satan? Tori Amos?

I know that Alanis Morissette's voice has always made my head feel like it was going to explode, but I had no idea there were documented cases.

And why didn't Bethany's head explode when God poked her nose and said "Werp?"

What, does it have to be a full word for the whole head-exploding thing to happen? That little "werp" vibrated those divine vocal cords, it should have dealt death to the mortals.

But maybe I'm nit picking.

All I have to say is that Harpo Marx would have been ashamed of Alanis's ability to stay quiet.