Review of Religulous (2008) by Ahnehnois — 16 Mar 2014

As Bill Maher himself says, he's not selling certainty, he's preaching the Gospel of I Don't Know. He sure does it in an entertaining way, however, touring the country and the world to meet some of the most ludicrous examples of religious people behaving badly the moviegoing public has ever seen. Not a journalistic expose like, say, the HBO doc Friends of God, this is more in the weird fact-based entertainment niche that Jon Stewart and Maher himself have popularized.

Interview subjects range from truck drivers to weed worshippers, the reincarnated Jesus Christ (one of them, anyway), a British Muslim rapper, and one of the Jews who patronized the Holocaust Denial conference. And so many more. Even Maher's mother stops in to talk about the religious component of his upbringing. It's reassuring to learn that some subjects (like a profiteering preacher and an anti-gay activist who seems awfully gay) experienced real scrutiny and losses after having their idiocy exposed on screen. Conversely, it's rather sad that Ken Ham's monstrosity of a museum is still going. It's a very Michael Moore style process where subjects are surprised (perhaps unfairly), but allowed to speak in their own words in response to common sense questions. They generally make fools out of themselves while doing so.

It's certainly an attack piece and while there are many truths here, they are selected somewhat arbitrarily. Christians, for example are shown not just as nutjobs but also in the guise of seemingly reasonable people such as a borderline atheist priest and a Catholic astronomer who believes that dogma doesn't trump science. Muslims don't get that privilege as Maher relentlessly rails on their xenophobia, violent rhetoric, and social conservativism. Neither do Jews, whose mainstream is omitted in favor of inventors trying to scam their god's Sabbath restrictions.

It is also odd that the film makes nary a mention of the Dharmic religions (Buddhism and Hinduism, among others), or of the numerous other religions of the world. A comparison of modern organized religions to animism, cults, and dead religions would have been quite informative (and probably fun).

The film jumps around oddly, following no clear narrative and going from lighthearted pranking to serious business without a blink. The ending is a bit abrupt, and prefaces the end of the world and makes a case for facing that possibility realistically. Nonetheless, taken as a whole, it's a film that taught me some pretty interesting things and definitely brings the laughs as well. Would that we had more discussions like this one.