So to Bill Maher’s kind-of documentary about religion. It makes no pretense to being even-handed, nor does it try to persuade anyone who might be wavering (though I think Maher would argue that no amount of balance would penetrate the deep levels of denial necessary for religious belief). It is uproariously funny, and often very powerful. It follows the style of his HBO show with humorous interviews followed by periodic rants which mount in intensity and passion. The final four minutes, with images of nuclear conflagration and ecological disaster accompanying Maher’s almost prophetic (in the good sense) argument about the destructive power of religion left me wordless.
One can question some of the interviewing. Early on he uses subtitles to undermine the legitimacy of one of his interviewees, and some of his sexual innuendo falls very flat on muslim audiences. But he captures the essential comedy of religious belief, and that is his main goal. It is just so incredibly ridiculous. He has a series of interviews with people representing truly obscure religions, usually involving space ships, which are all relegated to the deleted scenes. A pity, because adding them into the main film would have reinforced his point that those religions are not inherently less plausible than the major world religions.
Maher mostly goes after Christianity, and that is where he is most comfortable, but around a third of the film does short takes on Mormonism, Judaism and Islam. On the latter, he mostly mines (bad pun) the role of violence. There is a very early scene in which a black Christian preacher urges young men to stop thinking about women and sex, and direct their passion to religion. It is immediately followed by jolting footage of a car bomb.