Religulous

last night, after being led astray by rather positive reviews, i watched Bill Maher's Religulous. and let me just say that it was indeed pretty religulous. personally, i'm all for critical explorations of religion, but this documentary was at least borderline irresponsible in its presentation of the subject. Bill Maher presented a pretty interesting question to start the film off (Why do people believe what they believe?), but then went nowhere to answer it. He mostly spent the entire movie talking over people and shooting down everything they had to say. tactlessly. there were only a couple of interviews that had any merit (notably his interview with a priest who worked in the vatican observatory) and the rest just felt like an excuse for Bill Maher to make fun of people. there was only one person who refused to let Bill Maher talk over him, and when that happened, Mr. Maher decided the interview was over. instead of making Maher's point that this person is talking crazy, it just made Maher seem unprofessional.

if Bill Maher was really looking for answers and took this subject seriously, this documentary could have been really great. but it was fairly obvious from early in that he was not really interested in having a conversation or a debate. that's pretty unfortunate as far as i'm concerned. i think a legitimate exploration of these ideas could have created a great documentary. oh well, maybe next time.