Religulous

Director:Larry Charles
Run Time:101 minutes
Release Date:03/04/09

Although not as well known on this side of the Atlantic, Bill Maher is an American stand up comedian and satirist whose TV show routinely takes a pop at religion and right wingers. In this road movie style documentary, Maher travels across the world interviewing believers from the 3 largest faiths, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, to look at their existence problems. In an excellent film that is often effortlessly hilarious, Maher cheerfully demolishes his interviewees. Through a judicious use of kitschy clips and an up-beat sound track, the film manages to be fun while making intelligent points. Because religion is a topic that many get defensive about, in reality, your enjoyment of this film will depend heavily on what you believe. However, for those feeling queasy at the thought of having their “superstitions” condescended at for an hour and a half, fear not, Maher is not a scorched earth atheist out to hector everyone, rather he “believes in doubt”.

Maher could be criticised for picking interviewees who, to put it bluntly, are not the sharpest tools in the carpenter-box (although it has to be said that this group includes a senator, a rabbi and a scientist.) What’s more, the interviews are edited in a way that makes them look even stupider and Maher is always given the last word. Though funny, this is probably unfair. You could argue that Maher should have pitted himself against an informed theologian, although he frequently reminds us that he had difficulty in finding anyone high up in the church who would agree to be interviewed. If you look at it in another way though, the majority of religious people are not theologians. The people he interviews were probably a pretty reasonable cross-section of religious fundamentalists and as a reflection of their beliefs the film is probably pretty accurate. These are the sort of people the film is aimed at, so why shouldn’t he be interviewing them? In Ireland, picking on religious people would be akin to kicking a dog while it’s down. However, in America, religious people hold huge political sway. To be honest, they don’t need your sympathy, they have government and Rush Limbaugh on their side. This movie offers many reminders of this; a clip of George Bush telling us that “God informs my foreign policy”, graphs which show that although atheists and agnostics as a group outnumber blacks, Jews, homosexuals and NRA members, they are effectively invisible as a political lobby. Maher is probably not exaggerating when he tells us that one of his main reasons for making the film was to persuade atheists to come out of the closet.

Having being raised a Christian, Maher clearly knows more about Christianity than Judaism or Islam, and so it takes up the bulk of the discussion. No bad thing, as the film would have lacked focus if he had tried to cover them all equally. He still asks interesting questions about the other two religions, as well as touching on various fringe groups like Scientology and Mormonism, asking why we’re so quick to laugh off those religions when, if you think about it, what Christianity preaches is equally out there. So what if Scientologists believe our souls are descended from space aliens? Don't Christians believe that we were made out of dirt, by a Man who lives in a cloud castle in the sky, saved by a son who was also himself?

After taking us on a kind of roly-poly school trip whose itinerary included a visit to a creationist museum of evolution, a Jesus theme park, an Amsterdam coffee shop and a short-lived excursion to the Vatican, Maher suddenly turns serious in the final scene. Standing on a patch of ground that will supposedly be the site for Jesus’s return to earth, he shows a doom filled montage of the role of religion in world conflicts. With all the optimism of the Book of Revelation, he predicts that religion will ultimately destroy us all if we continue to allow it to influence our political actions. As a nuclear bomb goes off and the screen fades to black, it is probably fair to say that Maher is being a little melodramatic, even if it is a punchy ending. Nevertheless, this is hand on heart one of the most entertaining and interesting films I have seen all year. If you're not planning on doing anything else this Easter weekend (shame on you!) a trip to the cinema is definitely in order.

-K