Religulous

Religulous is great fun for fans of bullying.

In this documentary cum op-ed piece, comedian and public thinker Bill Maher seeks to explore modern religion.  In his quest, he mostly sticks to the three Yahvistic religions with which most of his presumed viewership will be familiar: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  (There's material on Mormonism, Scientology, and a few other belief systems, but the viewer in search of a comparison of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism will come away disappointed.)  Maher, a funny guy, uses his comic instinct to challenge and ridicule his interlocutors.  His point?  That it's time we evolved past religion before our beliefs lead us to destroy the world.

So far, so good.  The movie is well made, Maher is a genial host, and the proceedings succeed in being both thought-provoking and entertaining.

But there's a problem:  Maher avoids engagement with his intellectual peers, meaning people who are smart and theologically sophisticated and comfortable in front of a camera.  He discourses with well-meaning but intellectually unarmed truck stop evangelists.  He shows up frauds and hucksters and villains, but he often does it with subtitles or voiceovers, which speaks to a lack of either preparation or courage.  When he does talk with someone who, in my opinion, "gets it," he doesn't seriously engage him.  Rather, he appears to realize that he's swimming in deep waters and disengages fairly quickly.  In editing, the film, focuses on the man's disability, one which saddles him with distracting vocal ticks.

It was this interview, with a Vatican theologian, that turned me off to Religulous.  I mean, this guy was interesting.  He actually listened to Maher's ideas and built on them, rather than merely trying to joust with a professional comedian (always a bad idea).  He put Maher on his back foot without really trying, merely by being a smart and interesting guy to talk with.  And this made me realize what a missed opportunity Religulous really is.  Rather than follow Maher around for two hours as he picked on lightweights, I'd have gotten so much more out of two hours of conversation with this guy and his intellectual peers from other religions.  Could Maher have made this entertaining?  I think so.  Would it have helped him prove his point?  Probably not.  But it would have been world-class entertainment.

As it is, Religulous is content to tee off on the scrawniest kids in the playground.  It's funny as long as you aren't one of the scrawny kids.  But it's lazy and it's cowardly.  Ultimately, it makes us turn on the bully.  Religulous has a great idea and a capable host.  It deserves to be better than this.