Maher's look at religion will offend some, but it's mostly a funny film
By Christopher Kelly
mcclatchy newspapers
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.04.2008
It won't convert a true believer to atheism — or, for that matter, convert a dogged Bill Maher-hater to fanboy status. But the new documentary "Religulous," in which Maher tries to get people to explain to him the reasoning behind their faith, reminds us that pandering to your base isn't always such a bad thing.
Maher makes observations and points here that will be exceedingly familiar to anyone who has even a passing familiarity with his HBO series "Real Time." But the ideas are presented with energy and good cheer — and the movie comes across as a minor, but nonetheless valuable, contribution to our election-season national debate.
Ramshackle in design and rambunctious in spirit (the director is Larry Charles, who previously directed "Borat"), "Religulous" doesn't have much of a central thesis, beyond the fact that Maher thinks organized religion is a force of evil rather than good. To prove this, he bounces around the globe, meeting with everyone from a pair of fallen Mormons to an "ex-gay" preacher, engaging in mock-Socratic debates with each new person he encounters.
Some of these episodes, including one in which Maher sits in on a prayer group in the South, are predictably cringe-inducing. (Even when he's trying to be open-minded, Maher tends to come off as smug.) Some of them, particularly the one in which he visits a Christian theme park in Florida, are fascinating for the window they provide onto how religious belief plays out in modern capitalist America. Fortunately, most of the segments are funny without being (completely) offensive.
Be warned: "Religulous" is not the movie to see if you're bothered by people poking holes in, and sometimes outright mocking, the tenets of Christianity. And the movie certainly would have been better served if Maher had genuinely opened his eyes and ears to the true believers he encounters, as opposed to just paying them semi-polite lip service.
But Maher — who compellingly argues that, at 15 percent of the U.S. population, atheists and agnostics are the least represented "minority" group in politics — demands to be taken seriously, even as he's determined to make us laugh.
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