I saw Religulous last night.
I had such high hopes for Bill Maher, the comedian making the documentary.
Many good points were made on both sides, the sides being those with faith (everybody he talked to) and those without (Maher). Unfortunately for Maher, his eagerness to get his point across to those with faith made him less engaging. I really wanted to know what that nonZionist Hasidic Jew has to say about the state of Israel, but now I nor anyone else will know because Maher couldn’t take this guy telling him to shut up. So he could finish a thought. Without interruption. Ass.
Maher starts the documentary with his family history of religion. Okay, good enough. His Jewish mother never went to church with his sister and father to the Catholic church. When Maher was 13 they stopped going to church, most likely because his parents started using birth control as he finds out on camera. Okay, Bill, this is neat. We meet your sister and mom, cool, that’s nice of them.
Then we go on a battery of journeys of Bill talking to many Christians in the United States. The type that particularly bothered me were those who were convinced God and Jesus can reform homosexuals and their sodomistic ways. Spell check says “sodomistic” isn’t a word. I’m using it anyway! Bill talks to a man that plays Jesus at a Holy Land amusement park in Florida, and he confronts him about how in the monotheistic Christian religion, there is the father, son, and holy ghost — the virgin mother, too, for the Catholics — and how that seems a little silly. Jesus guy says that it’s like water. Water can be steam, water, or ice, but it’s still water. So it’s kinda like that! It actually shut up Maher. He could have let it be, but then he counteracts the analogy with “but this is all bullshit crazy talk anyway” and dismisses the extremely valid argument.
Aside from the random types of Christianity (Mormons for a whole five minutes!), Maher samples other religions in other places in Italy and the Fertile Crescent: Judaism in its different forms and Islam. He concentrated on the monotheistic religions that all take the Holy Land as their holy place. He used instances of older Mediterranean and Egyptian religion to pick apart how the idea of Christmas is a mix of religions, but he doesn’t present it as such. Rather than take the historical route of saying “oh hey maybe they combined forces of awesome” he went with trashing what people truly believe to be real. Way to get the point across, dick.
Noteable awesome people he interviews: guy from Vatican Observatory who states the historical and biblical timeline as one, priest in the street at Vatican City who talks shit on people who read into the Bible word for word, the Muslim leader guy who gets a text in the middle of the interview, the Muslim guy that lets Maher in to see the Rock, nonZionist Hasodic Jew guy that stuck up for himself. These guys I could listen to all day. Even the Jesus actor I could have listened to for a long while.
This documentary really could have been something, but Maher let his LISTEN TO ME tendencies get in the way. And the cutaways to random clips to show how over this Maher has become is super tacky. The text on the screen while in interview would have been just fine, asshat.
(and for not really important things, i’m agnostic/atheistic-like, raised presbyterian with samplings of syrian orthodox)
