Issue date: 9/29/08 Section: The Scene

Media Credit: courtesy image A scene from the documentary where Maher, right, interviews one of his subjects. [Click to enlarge]

Bill Maher, who is well-known for his sarcastic humor and tough critiques on politics, has taken on religion. His new movie, Religulous, which debuts on Oct. 3, starts out as a documentary and ends up with Maher's trying to convert everyone to atheism.

Maher tells his interview victims that he wants their opinions about the Bible, God and religion, but instead he ends up challenging their personal beliefs.

The film introduces Maher's statement on religion - that extremism is crazy. Then, with no rhyme nor reason, it rambles on in a poorly organized way.

Religulous lacks direction or purpose. It presents random interviews and brief facts without any in-depth analysis, making the documentary hard to follow.

The lack of intellectual commentary challenges the film's credibility. The inclusion of bizarre clips of extremist acts and behaviors are nothing new, they could easily be found on YouTube - which only adds to the lack of creativity.

It seems Maher was trying to be smart, but a few mistakes are found in the film. For, example, in one part of the credits, it states that Amsterdam is in Germany, when its actually located in the Netherlands.

The sarcastic humor makes the audience laugh, but that's it.

I sincerely expected to learn something, but this was like asking George Lopez to do deep research on illegal immigration - the result would be funny but catastrophic and non-intellectual.

amadeo_lopez_texas@yahoo.com

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