This Spiritual Satire Falls Short

Bill Maher doesn’t believe in God, but he has a lot of funny ideas about religion. Several of them will make you laugh out loud in Religulous, the television host’s globe-trotting, full-frontal assault on the three major Western faiths. When a Christian sex counselor tells him that no one is born gay, Maher deadpans: “Have you never met Little Richard?” When U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) talks about the Garden of Eden, Maher replies: “It worries me that people who are running my country . . . believe in talking snakes.” Maher can be entertaining, smart and caustic about religion. And director Larry Charles, who gave us “Borat,” is a good match for him, bringing the same eye for the sublimely ridiculous. They move from the Vatican to Orlando to Jerusalem to Amsterdam, with Maher tweaking Jews, Muslims, Christians, Mormons and Scientologists about their faiths. Read Review

By Neely Tucker