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Comic Maher has faith in his lack of faith
Bill Maher demands proof. What he gets as he spans the globe interviewing religious fundamentalists of various faiths are testimonials offering no tangible evidence of a deity. Don't tell him it's called faith precisely because there is no tangible evidence.
The millennial incarnation of Doubting Thomas, Maher - controversialist and host of HBO's Real Time - is a devout skeptic. And he is undeterred. In Religulous (rhymes with ridiculous), he impiously demands that true believers - Christian, Jew, Mormon, Muslim, even the pothead priest at Cannabis Ministry in Amsterdam - tell him why they believe.
A skilled debater and jolly jester, Maher is the irreverent host of this pageant of reverence from Borat director Larry Charles. While frequently very funny, there is something unsportsmanlike in the glee that Maher takes in baiting the fish in his barrel.
Still, like Borat before him, you have to wonder where Maher landed this collection of crackpots. Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Scientology are Maher's most frequent satirical targets. Buddhism, Confucianism, Hindu and African religions do not show up on his radar.
The son of a Roman Catholic father and a Jewish mother (the latter of whom appears on camera), Maher has long used religion as comic fodder. A clip from the Tonight show archives shows the young stand-up comedian citing his parents' mixed marriage as to why he hired a lawyer to accompany him to the confessional.
For most of the film, Maher uses the devout as straight men to set up his jokes. Though initially sidesplitting, over the course of Religulous, Maher has diminishing comic returns.
By the film's climax, at Megiddo, the site in Israel where it is predicted Armageddon will occur, when Maher starts fulminating against religion, he begins to sound like the fire-and-brimstone types his film sends up.
While even believers can support Maher's skepticism, when he denounces the faithful in sweeping absolutes at film's end, he sounds as absolutely certain as those he has mocked for the previous 100 minutes.
Contact film critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com. Read her blog, Flickgrrl, at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/flickgrrl/
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