“Religulous” Is Irreverant Fun!
“Religulous” Is Irreverant Fun!
by Darian Darqly
Ok, this review hits a little close to home or at least close to where I used to live. Believe it or not, yours truly was once a Bible toting, fire breathing, ultra-conservative, preacher of the gospel! Yeah, no shit?! That’s a story in itself, but that’s why I found Maher’s satirical documentary about organized religion to be so entertaining. If you’ve ever taken a nun’s ruler to the knuckles or been the butt of a “you’re going to hell if you don’t stop…” condescending Christian scolding or gotten in trouble for some other bad behavior that makes the baby Jesus cry, you too will appreciate the humor and the sad reality behind this film.
When you take the literalist Christian perspective out of the pews and into the streets it’s amazing how out of touch with reality it can seem. It’s also amazing how “borderline personality” some of the Christians in the movie seemed: truckdrivers arguing that the female DNA found in the blood on the shroud of Turin (scientifically proven to be a medieval fraud) is evidence that Christianity is true because it means Jesus had no human father and, therefore, was born of a virgin…wtf? This was also part of my issue with the film, though. It seemed to me Maher went for easy prey, interviewing mostly extremists and didn’t really take on any of the intellectual and more sane people of faith who probably come closer to representing the mainstream.
It was, however, both fun and excruciating to watch Maher discomfort the zealous by posing some very honest, simple questions about their religions, like “do you really believe in a talking snake?” and “Why doesn’t God destroy the devil?” The highlight for me was watching him – dressed like a homeless guy – preaching the extra-terrestrial doctrines of Scientology to a crowd as though he believed them (Ok, when you string them all together like that, it sounds a little crazy)! He’d better be careful. Messing with Scientology is “Risky Business” if you know what I mean. Tom Cruise will bend space and time and get his ass!!
The end of the film, while definitely dramatic, was just fucking creepy! Calling for the destruction of organized religion before it destroys us all, I thought, was a tad over the top, replete with a crescendo of violent imagery and creepy opera music. PLEEEASE! It felt like the hokie scare tactics of a tele-evangelist. Perhaps that’s what he was going for, but any humor in the parrallel would have been lost on average Joe Trailer Park and might have made him piss himself thinking Maher was calling for a widescale church burning campaign.
While not the church’s biggest fan myself any longer, I felt the movie leaned too heavily on Christianity and didn’t spend enough time picking on other religions. In my opinion, his militant appeal comes across less as a “truth seeking” Agnostic, (as claimed in the film), and more like an angry x-Christian, but the aim of the film is in its title, “religulous.” It’s a combination of the words, “religious” and “rediculous.” Maher’s point was to showcase the rediculous side of organized religion and, overall, I would give the film a fair review because, with that goal in mind, I’d have to say “mission accomplished!”
One Response to ““Religulous” Is Irreverant Fun!”
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find it on youtube or myspace directly,looks like you google searched this,so you can’t embed code it….once you fix it i’ll remove the pointless comments…like this one.