Synopsis

Bill Maher is an atheist/agnostic. This film chronicles his travels and interviews with a number of people who adhere to various religions, and the film aims to present the subject matter humorously.

Pros:

• Maher behaves better than I thought he would for at least half of the movie.


• Several big laughs.

Cons:

• Maher behaves every bit as badly as I thought he would for half of the movie.


• The subject matter is dumbed down to get those big laughs.


• Some gratuitous nudity and language.

Generally:

3 on a scale of one to five. Keep it in context and it's not bad.

Extended Review:

Bill Maher's Religulous is a better movie than I thought it would be, which is to say that I was able to watch it without getting viscerally angry... and that I don't dislike Maher any more after watching it than I did before.

It isn't a great movie, either ... but it's actually pretty good if you take it for what it is. This isn't serious theology, nor is it a real documentary. It's a documentary only in the Michael Moore sense. The movie consists of scenes wherein Maher travels from place to place interviewing mostly earnest, simple people, and setting them up so he can make them look silly with clever editing, subtitles and (occasionally) quick rejoinders.

The danger of a movie like this is that other simple people (or young people) will see it and take it for more than it is. Maher doesn't really prove anything here beyond the strength of his own convictions. But he does so with enough humor and style to make his perspective easy to adopt. I don't think Maher would disagree with me that it's incumbent on each of us to reach our own conclusions about life, the universe and everything. It's unfortunate that he doesn't do enough to encourage his viewers to do the kind of intense thinking and soul-searching that he has apparently done himself.

For the most part, Maher spends the majority of the movie tilting at straw men. Most of the people he goes after in the movie are easy targets, and many of them really deserve his attacks. People who twist religion so that it justifies a political agenda, or so that it defends hatred, or so that it can be used to dupe people out of money. Those kinds of people are clearly vile. Beyond that, those people do a terrible disservice to the many, many kind, honest, decent religious people in the world. Maher spends his time interviewing the wackos who make up a very small minority of the world's faithful. He talks to people like Fred Phelps followers, the proprietors of the Creationism Museum, and a Jewish "Rabbi" who denies the Holocaust and aligns himself with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Clearly none of these people are fair representatives of their various faiths.

But this is, of course, a movie. And a comedy at that. So Maher had to talk to people who could generate laughs. Maher didn't talk to normal, sane religious people for his film because they'd have been boring. So that's the context, and a viewer would do well to keep that in mind. This isn't really a movie about religion. It's a movie about weirdos. This is like interviewing Michael Jackson and implying that he's a fair representation of all musicians.

Still, I have to give Maher credit for a couple of things: For one, he really went after Islam with the same zeal he had for Christianity and Judiasm. I didn't think he'd have the balls for that. And there were a few scenes wherein he seemed to go out of his way to return the kindness and courtesy he has received. One exchange in particular, involving congregants at the Truck Driver's Church (of all things), seemed mutually warm and friendly.

I enjoyed Religulous to some degree, and given my own doubts about God and religion I found myself mostly sympathetic to Maher's point of view. I was sometimes aggravated by his arrogance and his over-simplification, but I went into the film expecting Maher to get on my nerves and he didn't disappoint.

Maher hardly comes off as the smartest or most reasonable person in his own film. No, the most reasonable and interesting person in Religulous is Father George Coyne, the former Vatican Observatory director who lost his job because of his strong defense of Darwinian Evolutionary Theory. Coyne points out (rightly, I think) that religious fundamentalism of all kinds is "a plague." It doesn't matter if you're a Muslim fundamentalist, a Christian fundamentalist, whatever. Once you get so devoted to a doctrine that you stop using the Brain God gave you, you might end up doing more harm than good. Fundamentalism is the real cancer that Maher is railing against. He makes that point with a heavy hand in the closing scenes. And that's fine. But it's a shame that he's painting all religious people with one brush. Or, if you'll allow me to mix metaphors, Bill Maher is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Trailer:

Labels: Movie Reviews, Movies