After sitting through Expelled, I felt the need to cleanse my intellectual palate. Thankfully I had Bill Maher’s Religulous to watch. Coming across like a mongrel of Borat and An Inconvenient Truth, it’s an alleged documentary, played for laughs. And chunks of it are indeed very, very funny - the Cannabis Ministry guy comes to mind.
Consisting mainly of Maher tracking down the more comedic elements of
out-there religion, it’s a wonder he
got most of these people to sign the release forms. I’m especially
thinking of the senator who admitted he
was religious because he was stupid. Maher uses his incredulity at these
people’s beliefs for humour, and he
does it rather well. It’s not the kind of film that’s supposed to make a
serious point, though of course it does.
Particular highlights for me were the Vatican priest who dismissed Hell
as a “silly idea”, and the Professor
Frink style inventions of The Institute for Science and
Halacha, devoted to technology to
work around the absurd orthodox Shabbat rules (cue the pneumatic
wheelchair).
Recommended.