Religulous

Bill Maher tells us that the only rational position when it comes to what happens when we die is one of doubt. Religion, therefore, must die in order for humanity to live. We cannot afford to have one if we expect to have the other. Of course, Maher doesn’t get into how seriously he takes religion and how ominous he believes it all to be until his closing remarks in 2008’s Religulous, a documentary that spends the majority of its time ducking honest discussion and playing to the cameras.

It is ironic that Maher closes off Religulous with an expressive supplication filled with the vehemence of the most fervent of religious folk. We are bombarded with visuals of brutality, devastation, intolerance, and environmental calamity as Maher tells us over a broad and insistent score that religion has to get the old heave-ho or we’re all going to die. The irony is rich, as the social critic/comic gives us the choice between ditching religion or dying in a blistering mess.

Much of Larry Charles’ Religulous is humorous, but much of it appears to fly in the face of its own purpose and undermine its own alleged seriousness. As serious as Maher claims to take the topic, he spends the majority of the documentary rolling his eyes or showing off how clever he is with nods to the camera, subtitles a la Stephen Colbert’s “The Word” segment, and cutaways to oft-hilarious clips. In fact, any time Maher has a halfway insightful subject to talk to, the segment is cut short and Maher winds up asking the most gutless questions ever conceived.

If you’ve read the latest pile of tomes from the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or Christopher Hitchens, there will be nothing remotely unique here. Maher’s argument, especially the argument presented at the end of the picture, is nearly taken verbatim from books like The End of Faith. Yet our travel guide does little to actually cobble together a revelation that matters, instead choosing to pester worshippers at a truck-stop chapel.

When Maher does match up with a subject worth talking to, such as Francis Collins or a compelling Muslim rapper, he does such a wretched job at managing the interview that one almost wonders why he bothered. The rapper, Propa-Gandhi, is interrupted so habitually by Maher that the exchange feels manipulated and deliberately impaired. Maher employs these tactics so frequently throughout the film that he moves from “The Seeker” presented during the opening sequence to “The Evangelist” within minutes.

The main focus of Religulous appears to be Christianity. In the beginning, Maher assembles his mother and sister for a “tête-à-tête” that gives background as to why the family left the Catholic faith. Apparently, Maher’s father and mother were using birth control and that was against the Catholic doctrine. The only rational thing to do for his family was to leave the faith outright. Sounds reasonable enough, right?

Maher’s whole institution is built on such involuntary philosophies. He bases Religulous on the concept that the weirdest and wildest religious adherents speak for the entire flock. A trip to talk to Ken Ham, the wacky character behind Answers in Genesis, yields an inevitably odd outcome that Maher assumes mirrors the entire Christian understanding of creation. Luckily, there’s George Coyne, former director of the Vatican Observatory, to offer an epigrammatic balancing stance that is discarded moments later when Maher heads to a preposterous Bible theme park.

With Maher’s concerns about religion being the death of us all, you’d think he’d pay more attention to his subjects or care more about the material. Instead, we’re given an undeveloped glance at the fringes of America’s Christians, a brief pop in with a few bizarre Jews, and a detestable inspection of Islam that uses footage of explosions to “counter” arguments that Muslims can be peaceful people. Maher even employs the use of clips from Scarface to equalize an outlandish dialogue with the Puerto Rican Jesucristo Hombre, José Luis de Jesús Miranda.

Religulous satisfied me to a point as a respectable work of religious satire. But once Maher began pontificating in the last few minutes of the picture, he lost me and his derisive itinerary was emptied of all import. Religulous turns out to be a shell of a movie. It is an emotionally-charged, scheming documentary with fetid intentions laced with alarm and trickery (Maher didn’t even tell his subjects what his film was about and most didn’t even know who was coming to interview them until the second he arrived). If Maher is truthfully serious in his charges against religion, he ought to take his subject much more sincerely.

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