Karl Klockars

Mmmm. Maher toast.

My wife surprised me the other week when she said, “Do you know what I want to go see?”  Actually, that wasn’t the surprising part.  She says stuff like that all the time.  Here was the surprising part:  “I want to go see that Religulous movie, or whatever it’s called.”  Huh?

I was expecting something like “I want to go see The Duchess, or whatever period movie involves big wigs and tight corsets and English accents comes out this week.”  That’s what I usually hear.  And she doesn’t listen to Bill Maher’s show via podcast every week like I do, she doesn’t seem terribly anti- or pro-religion, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like assholes – which more or less eliminates Bill Maher.  I don’t know how I got so lucky – must be the exception that proves the rule.

But there we were on Saturday afternoon, wiling away 101 minutes on a beautiful Fall day, watching Maher generally sneer and chuckle his way through a film.  And I thought to myself, “This isn’t bad.  But man, it could be so much better.”  Here’s how.

First: The first thing you notice about Religulous is how poorly it makes its arguments.  When you set out to make a point about something serious and important as faith, you should be ready to, and be able to, argue directly with the people you’re using to make your counter point.

"Do you mind if I subtitle you to look more like a dipshit?"

Religulous doesn’t do that.  It lets the interview subject think that they’re on ground different than what they’re actually standing on.  The film uses snide, smartypants graphics underneath the statements the interviewees are making.  Bill Maher is a smart guy – he’s not hitting the books after the interview and then learning the opposing argument to the things that Interviewee X is saying.  He knows them already.

So why doesn’t he make them directly to the person’s face?  Why not be willing to confront the people you believe are so misguided?  Because he believes its funnier to have a private ha-ha moment with the audience.  But it just makes Maher look unfair, as opposed to argumentally superior.

Second: Religulous would have done better if they had just spent 2 hours focusing on faith in America.  Evangelist faith.  Pentecostal faith.  The film is strongest when it’s railing against the ridiculousness of Christianity, of Mormonism, and of Scientology (even though this section of the film was shot in London).

So why waste our time with some goofball Don’t Work On The Sabbath Scientists?  None of us are stupid enough to believe that this is an accurate cross-section of Judaism.  We as an audience (and I do believe that I am part of his intended audience) are smart enough to understand that a small group of lunatics does not mean that the majority of followers are that loopy.  And are we really going to understand what’s wrong with Islam when we only get about 20 minutes spent on it?

Wouldn’t it be enough to say something along the lines of, “We understand that there’s rampant goofiness in all religions, and none of them are valid whatsoever.  But that’s a pretty big subject.  So instead, we’re going to apply flashlight-like focus to one brand of faith, one that we think has been especially manipulated, bastardized, and mutated to something completely unrecognizable as true religion.”

"Seriously. Why are you white?"

Then Bill could have spent more time investigating the True Believers, asking them over and over again if they really believe that Jonah spent 3 days in the belly of a Big Fish.  Maybe we’d get more than one sheep-to-the-wolves interview with another deep South evangelist Senator.  Or maybe we would have found out if Bill Maher had actually asked the fake Jesus if he really should have been black or Arab.  I can’t imagine he didn’t ask that question.  It’s so…obvious.  But we didn’t get to find out.  We should have.

Third: The film should have had a different host.  The anti-religiousness of Bill Maher seems less like actual problems with faith, but more like problems with the people that use it wrongly.  There are really two schools of thought on the subject – all faith is stupid, or faith can be used stupidly.  I don’t get the feeling that Maher adheres to either school strictly – just that it’s a good target for jokes at peoples expense.

As I walked out of the theater and we were rehashing the problems with the film, the real heart of the problem was that I didn’t take it seriously from the guy who was trying to make the whole point in the first place.  (The fact that it spent about an hour an a half telling jokes, and the last ten minutes proclaiming the apocalypse was nigh was a glaring problem as well, but that’s almost technical.)

You know who should have made this movie?  Penn Jillette. Not only would it have had heart and had been much more clever, it would have had more meaning.  Jillette has been the defacto voice for atheism for a lot of people, and would be able to make the point fairly and moderately respectfully.  Not only that, but I guarantee Penn could wipe the floor with Maher if it came to an argument about faith-based subjects.  Hands down.

So maybe instead of looking at this as a bad movie, maybe it’s better to look at it as a good kick in the pants for someone else to do better.  I can only hope that somewhere in Las Vegas, Penn Jillette took a few dozen friends to see Religulous on opening night, and came away deciding that he should make his own.