'Religulous' Review: Maher Should Stay on HBO, Forget Documentaries

Ever since the release of comedian Bill Maher’s “Religulous,” I wondered how the documentary would play in this part of the Bible Belt. I figured it would be a tough sell but didn’t expect to be the only one in the theater.
After seeing the film, it’s no wonder. It’s not just that the movie is an over-the-top assault on all religions, but it’s mean-spirited, underhanded and not even well crafted – far beneath the usual bar set by Maher as an old stand-up comic or now as the genius host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
Maher, the son of a Jewish mother and Catholic father, is an outspoken agnostic whose film, which he wrote and in which he stars, raises some profound philosophical questions about how humankind came to be.
Unfortunately, Maher doesn’t exactly seek out deep-thinking theologians or religious scholars on his quest for enlightenment. His staff used the fake working title “A Spiritual Journey” to nab interviews with unwitting religious fanatics, nut-jobs and fringe players whose first hint that Maher was involved was when he showed up, camera in tow.
He makes them all pay, save for one Vatican priest with a severe case of the giggles and who concedes that the whole idea behind a virgin birth and other foundations of Christianity is “nonsense” and “stupid.” No word on whether the priest was excommunicated for his less-than-monastic monologue.
Maher, whose family left the Catholic Church when he was 13 over the issue of birth control, believes all religion is a fairy tale best summed up by his documentary’s title – a merger of the words religion and ridiculous.
Clerics are peddling “an invisible product,” he says, adding, “Other guys are selling certainty; I’m on the corner selling doubt.”
There are some funny quips, although evangelicals won’t appreciate them.
For example, Maher wonders aloud about a teenage Jesus and says he probably had a “big Jew ’fro” and was “bad at sports.”
Maher’s journey took him to a truck stop chapel in Raleigh, N.C.; a creationist museum in Kentucky where dinosaurs and little boys frolic beside a stream; a church in Amsterdam that worships marijuana; Israel; Rome and Miami, where he meets a Latin man who proclaims himself to be a direct descendant of Christ sent here to personally represent the Second Coming. Then there’s the Holy Land Experience – a sort of religious amusement park in Orlando, Fla., where Maher asks the actor who plays Jesus, “Why do you think people come here? It is because Disney World is too smutty?”
Along the way, Maher talks over his interviewees like Bill O’Reilly with a liberal guest and then for added punishment tacks on snarky subtitles. He makes fun of the notion that Jonah spent “three days inside a big fish” and the story of “Adam and Eve with a talking snake in a garden.”
There are some profound moments that could add to the questions and confusions of Doubting Thomases, such as when Maher dredges up the names of ancient gods also born of virgins on Dec. 25 – before the birth of Jesus Christ. In other words, stories of virgin births on what is now Christmas Day were passed down thousands of years before Christ’s birth, Maher says.
Maher the documentarian is no Michael Moore. Love him or hate him, Moore’s work is more subtle; he doesn’t crowd his own films and usually lets the antagonists hang themselves. Maher bludgeons them with surprise visits, sarcasm and utter contempt.
“Religulous” will leave even Maher fans longing for his political diatribes on HBO. He should leave documentaries to the masters.

“RELIGULOUS” is rated R.

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