An Hour and a Half of Belly Laughs

I guess my blog is turning into a series of Movie Reviews. That's so strange because I'm so NOT a movie guy. Maybe that's why I find that the rare times I DO go, I need to blog about them. There's probably something psychological in this phenomenon. There's got to be a particularly compelling feature to get me to go see a film, and this one certainly qualified. The subject matter screams my name and I'm a huge fan of Bill Maher anyway. Last night I found myself in a cinema with no one under 30; that alone was refreshing.

I was at a seminar recently where we were asked to write down our own personal top 10 accomplishments. One of mine was successfully extricating my life from religion. That was particularly huge for me considering how completely and fully I believed. I was a faithful and obedient evangelical with my life, my mind, my heart, my time, my money . . . my everything. It probably took a good 10 years to completely detoxify. It’s that background that makes this film appeal so much to me. It presents a point of view, but it’s not polemic in the least AND it’s extremely entertaining. There’s nothing there that you won’t get from the dvd but I couldn’t wait to see something smart and brash and very funny. This is definitely NOT an escapist movie; you need to bring your brain and your wits.

Bill brings to light the silliness of many doctrines of the world’s major religions. The documentary is basically a series of interviews with people from these religions and Bill’s frank and honest reflections on them from the mind of a non believer. It' so hilarious you have to time your handfulls of popcorn carefully. But it’s all fun and games until someone pokes an eye out. The last few minutes of the movie he sums up how dangerous it has been in the past, and more importantly how dangerous it is now and can be in the future to have Church in your State. That was enlightening.

Anyway – this one was defiantly worth seeing.