Religulous

Director: Larry Charles
Writer: Bill Maher
Starring: Bill Maher
Synopsis: Politically provocative talk show host Bill Maher  skewers the current state of organized religion in this hot-button documentary that derives its title from a blend of the words “religion” and “ridiculous.” Making stops in Jerusalem, the Vatican and other holy destinations, Maher travels the world to talk to believers from a variety of faiths to find out why they’re so sure their religion is right — and why they’re so certain others are wrong.

This is going to be a very difficult review for me to write without going into a tangent. I feel that in fairness to the reader they should know where I stand on the issue of religion. I am an atheist. Like many other atheists, I was raised in a moderately strict religious household. My family didn’t handle snakes or speak in tongues or any of that sort of thing but we did go to church every week and it was made fairly clear to me that any number of things that I did were going to get me an express ticket to Hell. I don’t believe any of that stuff anymore and, honestly, I don’t think I ever did. So now you know where I’m coming from when you read this review.

I had read that this was simply going to be Bill Maher traveling the world asking questions about religion to people who were involved in that sort of thing. I was under the impression that this was not going to be a point and giggle at the weirdos session but rather would be an open dialogue between an atheist and those who believe in God, Allah, The Virgin Mary, etc. Initially that is what I got but it quickly dissolved into a tired documentary where the clever atheist guys laughs at the dumb christians or whatever religion he was laughing at at the time. This is all good and fine and he did ask questions that I thought were entertaining and enlightening but it came off as a bit more of an attack on religion than a legitimate debate about religion.

Some of the segments were very interesting. I learned that in the Vatican, they actually seem to have a decent perspective of how things work. I also have to give credit where it is due. Most of the people he talked to actually were willing to have an open dialogue with him in spite of the fact that he was basically mocking their belief structure. I expected a lot more situations where the church people would walk away or get very angry because someone was questioning their God. That didn’t happen very often so, kudos to the church people. They had absolutely no answers to any of the facts that were presented to them but at least they didn’t come off as complete jerks.

In the end this was just like so many other documentaries. You have to look at the agenda of the person making. Clearly the agenda here was to make churchgoing types look like imbeciles. Mission accomplished. It would have probably made for a really interesting hour long special on HBO but at an hour and 41 minutes, I found myself zoning out at the end. There are only so many ways you can make Christians squirm before it stops being interesting and starts being redundant.

Waldo