Movie Review
     Religulous - Bill Maher

It was funny.  Probably you aren't watching unless you are already kind of anti-organized religion anyway; that being the case, you'll find at least some of it very funny.  It stars just Maher and the people he finds around the world to interview.  It was directed by Larry Charles that directed Borat, and that was evident--it has a little of the guerilla-social media feel where the participants really don't know what they're signing up for when they agree to appear. 


He interviews a variety of kooks that make all of their respective religions look terrible.  He took care to find people that were stereotypical followers of their respective religions, while also being that type of person that embodies the well-documented underbelly of the religions too--that was my favorite aspect of course; 'the casting', if you will.  Basically he found idiots that could spout doctrine.  Having highly committed nitwits each defend their own religion was the easiest way to get the unflattering limitations out on the table.

There are some great edits that squeeze clips in the pause between some questions and the respondents' answers that are pretty funny.  He did make a Senator from Arkansas look like the idiot that he is--that was a great scene actually.  It ends with Maher jumping all over this guy regarding evolution.


Maher: Do you believe in Evolution?
Senator Dumbass: Well, there seems to be a lot of debate in the scientific community about it and..
Maher: No.  Scientists agree very thoroughly on this subject.
Senator Dumbass: Wellll.....
Maher:  Do you really think the story involves one man, one woman, and a snake in a garden?
Senator Dumbass: I do think it could have.
Maher:  Well, this is what pisses me off.  You are a Senator, and you get to make decisions about how this country is run and yet you are ok with that story.
Senator Dumbass: (laughing) Well, you don't have to pass an IQ test to be a Senator
Maher: (staring back at this imbicile, not laughing)
Senator Dumbass: (no longer laughing or smiling)
cut to next scene


That interview was 'funny--scary' because it is was probably pretty true to how the interview went and Maher probably had to do minimal editing to make that interview go that way.

It ended up being more of an attack on a dozen knuckleheads than the religions they were representing, but he has a couple of diatribes in the movie that tried to paint with a broader brush.

His final monologue was ok--worth listening to if you like Bill Maher.  The one point he made I was glad he snuck in was a complaint about religious moderates:  that little feeling of comfort you get for being a moderate (ie we go to church on Christmas, we don't eat pork because we're Jewish, etc) comes at a cost--it gives more legitimacy to extremists if they are extremists for a religion with millions of followers.  If the moderates walked away, you'd be left with a much smaller cult that would be easier to deal with.  When millions are involved, governments have more difficulty acting against these extremists.

For me, I wanted to see Catholicism and Islam taken to task harder; the one for being able to get away with thousands of known child molestations, and Islam for being so violent right now.