Review: Religulous (2008)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                           RELIGULOUS
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: Humorist Bill Maher's look at the
     irrationality that is the basis of most religions
     may not have a lot that people will find new and
     surprising, but at least Mr. Maher's arguments
     against religious irrationality seem to be on the
     side of the angels.  I did not find the film
     laugh-out-loud funny, but there is undeniable wit
     behind it all.  This is a film that is funny and
     disquieting.  Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

I remember seeing the film CONTACT.  Jodie Foster was playing
Dr. Eleanor Arroway.  In the plot she admits that she is an
atheist.  Voices in the audience actually booed her.  Had she said
she was a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Muslim, a Mormon, a
Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Scientologist, I don't think the audience
would have been bothered at all.  But the truth is that there
really is a lot of hatred in the United States for people who have
openly rejected a religious view of the universe.  People would
prefer someone with almost any religious view to someone with none.
Someone who looks at the world rationally is a sort of a threat to
people who believe that they actually drink the blood of a man dead
two millennia, or that there is a deep cosmic significance to the
color of hairs in a calf's tail or that the words of God were found
on gold plates buried in the ground.  I mean who really cares if
someone who believes in drinking urine finds what you believe is
silly?  But if it is someone who seems to be rational comes to
different conclusions, to many people that constitutes a threat.

In RELIGULOUS, Bill Maher sets out to document the diversity and
some of what certainly seems insanity in many Western religions.
His approach is a little scattershot, but never dull.  I have to
say that in spite of superficial similarities to Michael Moore
documentaries, I have much more respect for Maher's approach.  He
does not rely on Moore's attention-getting stunts, but just uses
cool and logical argument.  I would say that for me certainly he
has a good deal more credibility.  On the other hand finding
irrationality and folly in other people's religious belief is not
the most difficult or ambitious of goals.  But so many films
present a religious point of view, from Pat O'Brien playing the
wonderful all-knowing priest to James Cagney, to Ben-Hur finding
peace in a world of sin.  A good film with the opposing point of
view has been long overdue.  Maher travels to the Vatican,
Jerusalem, Amsterdam, and across the United States to places like a
shack turned into a church for truckers.  He interviews religious
zealots and counters their arguments and more importantly asks good
questions.  (One not quite fair tactic is to counter arguments
being made in titles at the bottom of the screen rather than
directly to the interviewee's face.)

Maher's thesis is that there is a neurological basis for religious
belief and that it is an extremely dangerous misfortune to people
that they developed the means to destroy themselves before curing
themselves of these neurological delusions.  Larry Charles who
directed the tremendously self-indulgent BORAT, here is far more
restrained.  The humor that comes from serious thought lasts longer
than humor from embarrassing people with nude wrestling matches.

Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make
you commit atrocities."  Bill Maher is saying much the same thing.
RELIGULOUS is a thoughtful and intelligent pleasure.  I rate
RELIGULOUS a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0815241/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper