Religulous (2008)--2/5

“Religulous” is evidence that Bill Maher’s smugness can’t carry a whole film. He has a better argument than Ben Stein’s intelligent design-propping “Expelled,” but their films could have been made by the same director. Each uses a distracting style of intercutting inexpensive or public domain clips to emphasize a point. So, for example, when Maher questions a Creationist Museum employee about dinosaurs living alongside people, a “Flintstones” clip amusingly (but not really) appears.

Maybe all the clips are in “Religulous” to obfuscate the fact that there’s not much going on in the film. Maher goes to some randomly selected religious centers, interrogates people with a raised eyebrow, and gets driven back to a hotel, thoroughly trashing them during the ride.

“Religulous” is concerned more with itself than it is about making any convincing refutation of religion. How else to explain the interview with a pot smoking Dutchman? He can’t even answer one question because he’s so baked. The only event of substance that occurs during this interview is that his hair (maybe) briefly catches on fire. His connection to religion is unclear.

The easy way to make these extreme religious people out as the nuts they are is to smartly debate them. Then, build the interviews into some kind of point. Maher is instead too concerned with cracking jokes and catching Biblical literalists in logical fallacies. “Religulous” is not a productive argument and watching it is not a productive use of 101 minutes.