Religulous: Movie Review

Religulous: Movie Review

Rating 7/10
Cast: Bill Maher
Director: Larry Charles
What are you to expect from a comedian for whom irreverent would appear to be their middle name?
Furthermore, what would you expect from the director who helped Borat terrorise parts of the civilized world?
Well, throw the two together and add in a mix of religion, and what you're left with is Religulous, a doco screening at the World Cinema Showcase. ( Read more about the festival here!)
Bill Maher, the host of American shows, Real Time and Politically Incorrect, makes no excuses about coming to the religious debate from a position of severe doubt.
He wasn't born skeptical - and was raised by a Catholic and Jewish family.
In this film, Maher meets Jews, Christians, Muslims, Mormons on his quest to see how the religious tick.
He heads to a Creationist museum in Kentucky - and visits a truck stop chapel - and along the way (in true Louis Theroux style) meets some of the more extreme believers on the spectrum as he tries to dissect what exactly faith is.
Maher's style is mischievous and, at times, (unsurprisingly) provocative as he interrogates people - sometimes, they answer as a rebuke to his increasingly irreverent questions.
He asks one believer (after telling them their take on miracles is pretty lame) why he doesn't kill himself if he can't wait to be with God.
As the doco unfolds, there are some crafty and amusing inserts between questions and interview subjects - during the Creationist segment, scenes from Planet of the Apes are shoehorned in for comic effect; and subtitles crop up on the screen during various interviews.
Some of these are relevant and some of them are just punchlines - but they give the doco a different feel to normal handlings of the subject.
The only time Maher loses the upper hand to an interviewee comes when he meets up with an anti-Zionist rabbi - Maher's so stunned by the rabbi's beliefs, that he walks out.
Elsewhere the interview subjects are mocked, belittled and provoked into answers - and at times, it's very funny - even if it is biased.
Religulous has a nice closing monologue from Maher where he extols the benefits of doubt which he says is more humbling than the arrogance of belief.
Ultimately, Religulous won't cause you to question any beliefs you have and it won't open your eyes too wide into other religions and their ways.
Maher's at times contemptuous attitude, may offend some - as he has a viewpoint from which he refuses to shift from - and Religulous' argument that religion has caused a lot of misery in the world is not a new one.

However, don't be surprised if you find yourself warming to him as the film goes on.