Directed by Larry Charles; Starring Bill Maher with his mother and sister, Kathy and Julie Maher; 101 minutes, Comedy, 2008

Usually I don’t try to review (or even see!) movies that are obviously religious or about religion. The operative word is "obvious." However, a couple of people have asked me about my "take" on this one and after mumbling that I hadn't seen it, I finally broke down and rented it. So here goes.

As I expected, it annoyed the hell out of me! Nevertheless, I think it was worth seeing because my defensiveness and annoyance helped prompt some questions like, "Do I believe that? Why do I believe that? Do I hold that as a truth,? A superstition?"

Maher begins in Meggido, Israel, (ar meggido = armaggedon) the place of many Old Testament battles and the purported place for the final battle marking the end of the world. He then proceeds to interview people in Jerusalem, England, The Netherlands, Vatican City, and across the USA. He talks with the kooky, the simple, the outrageous and the dangerous; everyone from a Jew-for-Jesus who runs a kitschy religious gift shop and earnest Truckers-for-Jesus, through a character who plays Jesus in a religious theme park to a fundamentalist US Senator. Along the way he intersperses scenes of nuclear explosions, riots, discredited evangelists and off beat Muslims and Jews dressed in funny clothes. Comedy is not a fair and balanced art form and Maher is an equal opportunity offender. Some gags are quite funny and I admit to the odd guffaw. To his credit, Maher appears to have a genuine affection for some of the folks he obviously thinks are kooky but mostly he has a sneering "How-can-those-idiots-believe-that-crap" attitude. He seems stuck on whimsical details like talking snakes or Jonah in the Whale/ fish and The Creationist Museum’s portrayal of dinosaurs living with humans. Ironically he is as unaware of his own modernist-fact-fundamentalism as his religious fundamentalist targets seem to be of theirs and he is as intolerant of anyone who thinks differently from him. Overall, Maher picks easy targets, displays no capacity for metaphor and mocks the power of story. Never does he engage an articulate, progressive Christian.

Maher is disarmingly personal, with an account, through an interview with his family, of his growing up. His father was a Roman Catholic and his mother a Jew. He went to an RC Church with his sisters but dropped out as a young teenager. His perspective is that religion is a "neurological disorder" and that it is dangerous. He seems to blame all violence and injustice on religion and he ends at Meggido with a rant that humanity must "grow up or die," with nuclear explosions as a back drop.

I can't help but think this was all done better by Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th Century Danish philosopher who was a fierce lover and critiasc of the church. In a famous parable he told of a circus coming to a town. When the patrons had left for the night a fire broke out and the only one available to run for help was the clown. He ran to the village crying out "Fire! Come quickly! We need your help." The town's people all laughed, for is it not the nature of clowns that they make jokes!

It's true. We often cut a ridiculous figure in society, for we dress funny, we talk funny and we behave funny. The message of Jesus, for justice and peace, (Fire! We need your Help. Come quickly!), is serious and coherent. When we get that right we may be seen as annoying but seldom as buffoons.