Religulous (2008)

Bill Maher travels about talking to religious folks and it's pretty fascinating. It didn't really have a story or structure, it was just "get a load of this guy" and "whoa -- these people are nuts, just listen to 'em!" Often, Maher's got it right: the people on screen are so heavily invested in their beliefs that they often come off as rather nonsensical. But I'm aware that the editing was handled in such a way that comments seemed idiotic when they probably wouldn't have been with full context. For example, the former head of the human genome project, Dr. Francis Collins, is one of the "believer" interviewees and Maher challenges him with the well-worn "the gospels don't match exactly, but they cover the same subject. How does that make sense?" argument. I'm pretty sure that Collins explained it a little better than the fragment of an answer we saw (I can do that one in my sleep...eyewitnesses never see exactly the same thing/the focus of one guy is different than another's/if they matched exactly, that would challenge the authenticity of the documents, etc.).

Not as laugh-out-loud funny as I expected, nor was it as well-informed as I thought it would be -- Maher often got his facts wrong regarding the beliefs of the religions with which I am familiar. Even with that, though, I never had the sense that he was openly mocking believers. He seemed genuinely interested in giving everyone a chance to talk. I'm sure the goal of this exercise was to allow people to dig their own holes (and, for the most part, they did not disappoint), but he always seemed to be listening -- willing to consider what was being said before rejecting it.

I would encourage everyone -- not just those who don't believe -- to see this. A little self-awareness is never a bad thing.

B+