"Religious people look at me as you might look upon a retarded child. 'He's unenlightened. He needs to be saved. He needs to be cured.' I respect all human beings and I would like them to see my version of enlightenment. And mostly I want them to laugh."
 
Bill Maher
 
 
Make no mistake about it. "Religulous" is about Bill maher. It is not a documentary about religion hosted by Bill Maher rather it is a documentary about Bill Maher looking for some common sense in religious beliefs. This is both the strength and weakness of the movie I saw yesterday afternoon with a large and very enthusiastic audience. Bill maher is a funny guy. He finds humor in virtually everything. He is fascinated with the absurdities of life and our seemingly seamless ability to accept them and get on with our lives. He's a great listener and observer and never misses a thing. He's fiercely intelligent, self depreciating and his humor is spontaneous and contagious. That's the strength of the film. It is about Bill Maher. The weakness is Bill Maher spends a lot of time and effort looking for something that we all know doesn't exist. Faith has nothing to do with common sense and he knows it.
 
What we get is a serious of interviews with an assortment of religious charlatans, goofballs, con artists, freaked out fundies, rapture bunnies, tongue talkers, Jews for Christ and gays for God, orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims, holy rollers and born-again Messiahs  We even get a pot junkie in Amsterdam who is so brain dead he thinks his hair is on fire. We do get to go to Israel and see where it all began for the three great religions of Abraham and get to look at a lot of old rocks. The one thing the folks in that region of the world have in abundance .......is old rocks.
 
Maher is convinced that religion is indicative of a neurological disorder but if that is true it is world wide and deeply engrained in humanity as a whole. He spends a lot of time showing examples of this but seldom any time trying to figure out why this is. He's not condescending or hostile but strangely not much interested in the "why" of it all. He is very interested in what he thinks being religious does to us. His view is that the general effect of religion on humanity is....in a word ...dehumanizing. It makes us less human. History seems to back him up on that.
 
However history is multi-faceted but the movie is not. We are presented with the whacko's that religion produces but we see none of quiet believers who worship their God privately and without public grandstanding. In fact for a documentary about religion there is very little "God" in it and nothing about the search for God that many are on. The film is preaching to the choir because I doubt many religious folks will actually go see the film and the movie is likely to re-enforce the beliefs of those who see religion as Maher does.

At the end of the film Maher leaves the Christian theme park Disneyland atmosphere and we see him back to where he was at the beginning standing on a bunch of rocks in Israel where the Bible says the end of the world will begin. He stands there and lectures us on the horrors religion has visited upon the world replete with video of nuclear explosions and aircraft flying into skyscrapers. He tells us to "grow up or die". Chill out Bill.....you're not very funny when you pontificate.

So......what did I learn from watching two hours of "Religulous"? Well.....I knew Bill Maher was funny and was anti-religious before I entered the theater. I had seen, heard about and posted about most of the whacko's put on display in the film at one time or another so nothing new there. I guess I didn't walk out of the dark of the movie theater into the light of the day any wiser or better informed but I did laugh a lot and as Bill said "....mostly I want to make them laugh." He did that.

..............oh and I did learn one thing. They sure have a lot of old rocks in Israel.

Rose