Religulous (2008)

Bill Maher is a comedian and television star who is known for sociopolitical jokes and observations. Religulous has Maher teaming with producer and director Larry Charles (Seinfeld, The Tick, Borat, etc) to travel around the world and talk to the religiously inclined. The title of the movie provides a clue of what is to come, ie religion is ridiculous.

Maher visits a variety of religious leaders and believers to ask about their faith, and provoke them with logic and reason and historical/scientific facts. It doesn’t take much to upset the faithful, as their beliefs cannot hold up to any kind of rigorous, or even common sense, evaluation, and they don’t want to deal with that reality. Some of Maher’s subjects are tolerant, some are easily riled, and others seem oblivious to what is happening. Maher’s style is a touch too confrontational to inspire trust in his subjects, but that doesn’t stop the interviewees from providing incriminating examples on the dogma and hypocrisy of faith. I wonder what it would have been like if Maher had the gentle and amicable approach of someone like Louis Theroux. All you have to do for illuminating viewing is let the fanatics talk and they will make themselves and their beliefs seem ridiculous.

Nothing Maher does is new, but any effort to expose religion as farce is a good antidote to the constant propaganda of religions being a “good” force. Noone Maher talks to is convincing as to why their god exists or why their religion is right. Maybe that is the editing, and maybe that is the way it is. I don’t think it was the editing, they all seem delusional. The statistics and comparisons Maher uses are good, but the faithful have no interest in understanding where their gods come from or how their religion evolved.

The movie is unlikely to change your mind about god and the church, but it might convince you that you have seen the light and provide an assortment of laughs and shocks at what some people believe.