Film

Religulous

Religulous

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Cert:(15)
Dir. Larry Charles
USA , 101 mins, 2008
Cast: Bill Maher

The short film Story of a Room will be shown before this film.

Guaranteed to offend all denominations, this comedy-fuelled rant against religion in all its forms postulates the theory that it is a dangerous and irrational concept. Hardly original, but Bill Maher keeps it all subjective and, given his predilection for focusing on oddballs, frequently very funny. From the Michael Moore school of documentary, this is engineered to tell all from one narrow perspective.

Known to millions as a TV satirist, Maher is also a widely published author and stand-up. He’s made his broadcasting name as an interviewer by deploying often very prickly honesty vis-à-vis his subjects, angering guests, yet never being merely gratuitous in his hectoring. In Religulous, Maher is perfectly comfortable as the unwelcome guest, pitching faux-naive questions to interviewees, luring them into saying something ridiculous. Maher travels across the States, then the wider world (Jerusalem, The Vatican, The Netherlands), and interviews all manner of people about their religious faiths: Ministers in lizard-skin shoes, maniacal clerics, someone attempting to reconnect gay men with the straight Christian within... all are subject to the Religulous treatment.

As he tours his subjects, Maher takes cheap shots – in many cases it would be almost impossible not to. Yet he’s totally sincere in his mission: “If one believes that the world is going to come to an end, does it not drain one’s motivation to improve life while we’re here?” At heart, Maher doesn’t want to destroy religion; he merely wants to understand what motivates us. And so, even though he and his film will make people angry, there’s a strain of self-improvement to the whole exercise. In the words of Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun Times: “I report faithfully that I laughed frequently. You may very well hate it, but at least you've been informed. Perhaps you could enjoy the material about other religions, and tune out when yours is being discussed. That's only human nature.”

Maria Wallace

“I report faithfully that I laughed frequently. You may very well hate it, but at least you’ve been informed.” – Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun Times

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