The idea of a documentary that uses humour to attack religion has great potential. Comedian Bill Maher (of Politically Incorrect fame) is a clever, persuasive and witty man, eager to strike a blow for rational thinking. Religulous should be dynamite. However, because none of the people in the film find their level of faith altered in either direction during the running time, we end up with a curiously lukewarm viewing experience that settles for being kind of funny (unless you are a deeply religious person, in which case Religulous is not interested in making you laugh).
With the randomness of a twitchy channel-surfer, Maher travels to such spiritually significant locales as Salt Lake City, Vatican City and Meggido, Israel. Sometimes, the film crew is muscled off of the site before they can even get started, and the film simply shrugs its shoulders and shows a few seconds of footage of Maher saying “well, we got kicked out” before moving on to the next location. Most documentarians would have cut this footage out. Michael Moore would have turned it into a dramatic standoff between truth-seekers and implacable authority figures. Here, director Larry Charles just seems to be documenting his missed opportunities.
To say that the bulk of Religulous is interview footage is misleading. We see Maher speaking to various religious individuals (a senator, a “creation science” museum curator, an actor in a Jesus costume, two gay Muslims and many others), but we rarely get to hear the “interviewees” speak. Instead, Maher makes a few cracks and comments, and the subject simply stands there in uncomfortable silence. The camera hangs on Maher's every word but rarely shows any interest in listening to anybody else, which is a shame, because I'm sure some of the crackpots would have said some hilarious stuff, given enough time and encouragement.
With this approach, why make a documentary at all? Most of Religulous could have been reproduced by simply filming Maher in a studio, reading his clever, pointed material off of a teleprompter. In fact, it would save the audience time and money to just go to YouTube and watch several clips from “Real Time with Bill Maher,” in which he does precisely that.
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