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Critics Consensus: Religulous is funny and offensive in equal measure, and aims less to change hearts and minds than to inspire conversation.
Critic Consensus: Religulous is funny and offensive in equal measure, and aims less to change hearts and minds than to inspire conversation.
All Critics (154) | Top Critics (40) | Fresh (107) | Rotten (47) | DVD (6)
Over-extended but nonetheless thought provoking and humorous documentary.
Shooting fish in a barrel is the order of the day in comedian Bill Maher's faintly tiresome attack on religion.
Maher is essentially and professionally a comic, and the measure of this movie is not just the thoughts it provokes but the laughs it generates.
I think this is an important movie, challenging, many beliefs that many of us seem unwilling to talk about. Mainly, though, you'll laugh...a lot.
About half of the movie works in its snide, hit-and-run way. The other half throws more and more darts at the same balloon, long after it pops.
Religulous has an unholy fervor that should start many bonfires.
It's hugely amusing to see an argument so cheerfully loaded, so barefacedly one-sided, and so frankly determined to bully the other side into silence.
As Bill Maher demolishes one soft target after another, his smugness wears thin.
Bill Maher admittedly dresses a one-sided anti-religion diatribe in documentary linens and the hypocrites he finds make great punchlines. But he also addresses the historically proven truth of faith perverted for power and the danger posed to us all.
Rather disconcertingly, the film builds towards a vision of the apocalypse, the destructive fate that religious conflicts have in store for us -- a version of the future any hellfire preacher would be proud of.
Borat/Bruno meets Michael Moore in this funny and thought provoking attack on religion.
So if you are not already on-side with [Maher's] particular leanings, the pickings in Religulous are very slim indeed.
An entertaining film in which Maher approaches in an eye-opening manner the undeniable danger represented by religion and the logical nonexistence of virtue in faith, although he also waters it down a bit by mainly targeting the most stupid kind of people that he can find.
Super Reviewer
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Bill Maher: It's like the lotto. "You can't get saved if you don't play." "Heaven help us." Religulous is an opinion film at its core. This is a movie where one man, Bill Maher goes around talking to religious cooks and church members, which allows him to try to refute all their beliefs and instead pass on his opinion of religion. For a lot of people this technique really wouldn't work for a documentary. If your opinion doesn't hold much weight then your film will fall because of that. This isn't the case with Bill Maher and Religulous. The reason: because Bill's opinion's are backed up with solid ideas to back them up. This isn't a movie that someone who is very religious should be seeing because you won't enjoy it and you know that going in. However, if you're an atheist, there will be a much greater chance you love this, because a lot of the same reasons you are an atheist are Bill's too. Then there are the people like me(Bill included in this group), that aren't religious at all and fail to ever become religious because there are way too many unanswered questions and absolutely no facts or proof. In the end, all these holy books seem to be are stories and most of the early religions stories are pretty damn similar. This really is a movie that I enjoyed more than my score of it indicates. I'm giving it a good, but not great rating, because it fails to become anything more than just an opinion film. If I were to rate this on how entertained I was and how much I enjoyed it, I would be able to give it a much higher rating. As far as a recommendation would go, I would give it a mild one. This isn't a film I'd recommend to my grandma or father, but to friends who do think alike, I would. In the end though, it should be pretty easy to decide if this is a film for you. Are you religious? If yes, pass on it. If no, give it a look.
Comedian Bill Maher takes his smirking cynicism of religious dogma on the road and talks to various crackpots in this documentary exploring belief. Maher is taking up the standard of the likes of Bill Hicks as he mocks his way through the various modern faiths both great and small. Religulous is clearly meant more as comedy than documentary as his smirking, mocking tone when he interviews his victims is hardly the most objective starting point to a serious argument, but one could also argue that if any of these people had a logical leg to stand on they would be able to defend their beliefs from such impudent sarcasm. But they can't. Instead we see a bunch of "leaders" who do little more than continuously state and restate their outlandish tenets or merely figuratively stick their fingers in their ears and shout "I'M NOT LISTENING I'M NOT LISTENING" as they each blatantly contradict each other and claim that theirs is the TRUE word of god. It's actually all very funny stuff to a confirmed atheist but I'm sure it will antagonise "true believers" everywhere and as such is clearly just preaching to the converted. But this convert though it was hilarious!
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