Word: maher
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After watching Bill Maher’s new documentary about the ridiculousness of religion, appropriately titled “Religulous,” it’s hard not to agree with Maher that religion is analogous to a “giant space penis.” This idea stems from a small rural community in England where the citizens diligently maintain a shrubbery-outlined figure of a man with an epic erection on a grassy hillside overlooking the town. Created hundreds of years ago, no doubt by some horny botanist, the presence of this figure remains unquestioned...
...Which is what, at its infrequent best, Religulous is: not so much a movie, more a series of interviews with the kookier, clueless representatives of the faithful. Maher chats up one guy who used to be a Satanist priest and a fundamentalist minister whom God cured of being gay. He talks with born-again truckers, and some evangelists who make a plush living off the generous contributions of their cash-strapped communicants. He visits the Creation Museum and an Orlando theme park called the Holy Land Experience, where the actor playing Jesus flunks Maher's quiz on some of Christianity...
...someone with a similar bio-sketch to Maher's - a religious skeptic raised in a middle-class Catholic family - I might be expected to be a devout follower of Religulous. But I can't fully believe in it. Maher and Charles, the director of the Borat movie, should have come up with a rowdier, more penetrating exposé than this one. The film registers decently on the amuse-o-meter, and its offensiveness has a tonic value, but it's deficient in shape, propulsion, urgency. Look at almost any Michael Moore movie, and you'll find the sharp personality...
...There's no question that the kooks give good sound bites, and Void knows there's been enough evil committed in the names of Jesus and Mohammed. Still, I wanted Maher to confront, and be challenged by, the better class of believers: a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, perhaps, or some articulate Episcopalian or Islamist, or comedian and noted Catholic layman Stephen Colbert. Maher seems interested less in conversation than in confrontation, so his movie is less essay than inquisition. Maybe that tone will win Religulous some conversions, but this critic remains a skeptic...
...meetings, Healy had said that taxes would likely go up to accommodate a budget increase, which the Council set as five percent over the summer. Calling the results “phenomenal” in light of the “volatile times,” Councilor David P. Maher also noted that the city is in the midst of building a new library and refurbishing its war memorial. Tax rates in fact increased from the fiscal year 2008 rate from $7.36 to $7.56 per $1,000 of value. Because property values fell slightly in Cambridge over the past year...