While I didn't disagree with what he was saying, I found Maher and by extension the film to be self-satisfied to the point of being obnoxious. It didn't help that the interviews were clearly cut to ribbons to always give Maher the upper hand. I'd have appreciated him mugging at the camera less, and letting some of these arguments have a bit more room to breathe. Didn't he have enough easy targets that he could have let the religious scientist actually get a thought or two in? Apparently not, and while Religulous never had the intention of being anything but a diatribe against religion (and an occasionally amusing one), the argument is just as deaf to dissent as those it is attacking.

Thanks MD. I was hoping someone would let us know the style in which it was filmed. I' loved Bill Maher when i was originally introduced to Politically Incorrect, till i realized what you said above over there .. his panels are normally one sided and usually, the one person he has representing an alternative point of view is usually the one person in the US he finds that either has nothing to contribute or is totally insane. Seems like hes filmed this one this movie in the same manner.

You described Religulous perfectly.

These people are real, whether that's scary or not it's totally true. That hispanic guy who said he's jesus might be the crazy end of it, but I know a lot of people who would say all of the things that the people maher interviews would say (hell I'm related to a couple) he really didn't dig out the crazies, not for the whole thing anyway, a lot of this is very realistic.

It's a realistic portrayal of crazy people (religious zealots). It's not about religion per se as Maher desperately wants and makes it out to be. He is so insecure in his atheism (or afraid he won't be able to defend it if he talked to normal people) that he tries to make his point by walking on the margins of the circle that is religion, never intending and never daring to come closer to the centre. It's quite pathetic.

Thing is the few educated religous people are not the problem. So why would he focus on them? It's dumb blind fools who have no idea what they believe really and why they believe it.

He's a comedian not a documentarist. And he's quite open about "not knowing" what is the truth. That's his point. Just because he doesn't believe that Jesus is the son of god doesn't make him an atheist. I don't know if he's ever called himself that or not.

Most of the people he speaks to in the movie are either average--by US standards, at least--or hold some kind of (self-appointed) religious position with lots and lots of followers so what exactly disqualifies them as valid to speak to? They aren't some crazy living in a hollowed out tree, they're just people--business owners, random folks, priests, etc. Those people at that Christian theme park were just people who were at the the park that day, that's all. Who should he interview that would meet this random seal of approval? I think it's amusing all those people he spoke to aren't qualified as "normal" so they don't count, for some reason. What made that Christian senator not "normal"?

He's a comedian who wanted to make a movie from the non-religious, agnostic/atheist (he's described himself as agnostic and a hater of religion) point of view for once. There are more and more Christian themed movies all the time, and in general the "non-believers" don't get much representation, so what's this horrible injustice?

Oh no, there's a documentary about religion by an agnostic comedian and it's biased (the first non-biased documentary, apparently). Cry me a river.

Its better then I expected, Maher certainly found some real nutters and his eviseration of them is pretty funny in a car crash way, but I'm on the side of those that point out the laziness of it. Its kinda like a Religious person doing a doc on non belief and using the Khmer Rouge and Enver Hoxha as the main points of study. It just doesn't add anything interesting to the debate.

Watch it as a fun Doc and you'll enjoy it just don't threat it as a serious peice of investigative Journalism which is kinda what it wants to be.

Those parts did actually help me understand your own dislike towards religion better, America does seem to have a large amount of religious people that are religious in a very wrong judgemental way, If i was surrounded by that I would crack up as well. But America is only 2% of the world's population and for every nutter there are main quiet people who happlily attend church or the mosque every week and never imposes or uses their beliefs in negative ways on others. The silent majority I guess.

I will say Maher should do more Doc's, outside of his questionable interview choices he makes a slick film.

i can't really ... i haven't seen it.

If something hasn't changed in the last 7 years, i believe the last time i saw politically incorrect, he stated something along the lines of hes not an athiest ... he however didn't expand beyond that.

Well said!

Honestly, i would continue this argument, as I do have some reasonable points to make, but even though I haven't been here long I know how one sided and impossible to diagree with you are. Once you make your mind you won't change it at all, regardless of the other person points, and I don't feel like wasting my time trying to make my case when you won't listen at all. So whatevs, think what you will.

The film is called 'Religulous'.

No, it is amusing. That is what it aims for.

Despite being a devout atheist, I could not summon up the interest to watch two hours of Bill Maher's smugness...

I change my mind. Once I'm proven wrong.

Your counter argument is that the people in his documentary are real. I never said they weren't. I don't like the movie, because it has a certain theme, but it's not a good documentary.

Documentary is an objective art discipline. There are number of ways to add subjectivity to it without losing what documentary should be all about as the subject matter has to be dissected properly in order to achieve the goal you set out to make or maybe even the final conclusions prove you were wrong.

Maher explicitly told he found religion ludicrous and wanted to find out what the deal was with religion and religious beliefs. But not once during the movie have I felt like that's what he was really trying to do. His main goal and the way the movie was constructed was completely engineered to back his claims, without actually trying to understand why, what, where, etc. He just waited to make a "smart" remark at someone while he interviewed them and do stuff like that. You could see on his face he was as judgmental to people who believe as they are judgmental in certain things. I find both ends of that spectrum wrong.

I'm all up for bashing religion as people really do believe in some stupid things. But that has been present since the beginning of humanity. Maher was on some kind of a personal crusade, without understanding that some people need to believe. He never tried to understood why. He was just asking questions to provoke and get crazy answers.

Hmm....
NOW I finally understand your point fully, and give you credit. Under the context in which you described a documentary, you are totally right, he utterly failed at achieving these goals, and if all docs are restricted to your context, than yes, this is an awful documentary.
Where I disagree is with your definition. I don't see any reason all docs have to conform to being a factual, unbiased look at the issues. I think that docs are generally used as a way to inform and educate, but that does not mean they have to, I think Maher's goal was more to entertain and confirm his points than take a reasonable look at the issue. Is this right for a doc? Sure, why not, he can make it whatever he wants it to be, and in what he set out to do, he achieved his goals thoroughly.
It would be like hating Milk because it wasn't entertaining but rather emotional and informative, that's it's goals and you can't hate just because there weren't car crashes and explosions to hold your interest.

One more point: just had 2 mormon ladies come to my door and talk my ear off about the mormon church of christ, john smith, and so on. They came up to my house, gave me a free testament bible thing, and are going down the street giving out the books. Whether or not Maher did the best job, somebody does need to be making fun of these people, and I'm glad he did.

You should have answered the door with a huge erection.

And a bottle of Jack Daniels

OMG!! i've been wanting to talk to someone about this. i have had jehovah's witnesses come to my place twice .. on each occasion, they just gave me a book, spent less than 20 seconds telling me what it was and what event they were having and left.

i've had worse visits from the fedex guy.

Haha, I would have rather had that than these mormon chicks. They wouldn't leave, and while I love being rude to people I know, I hate doing it to strangers. So i couldn't just say stfu.
Anyway, are you about to become a jehovah's witness now?

I saw nothing!! NOTHING!!