Synopsis
Commentator-comic Bill Maher plays devil's advocate with religion as he talks to believers about their faith. Traveling around the world, Maher examines the tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and raises questions about homosexuality, proof of Christ's existence, Jewish Sabbath laws, violent Muslim extremists.
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Cast
- Bill MaherSelf - Host/Narrator
- Jose Luis De Jesus MirandaSelf
- Andrew NewbergSelf
- Steve BurgSelf
- Tal BachmanSelf
- Jonathan BouldenSelf
- Francis CollinsSelf
- George CoyneSelf
- Benjamin CremeSelf
- Jeremiah CummingsSelf
Recommendations
- 91
Entertainment Weekly
He's a bombs-away provocateur, and in Religulous, Maher's blasphemous detonation of all things holy and scriptural, he doesn't really pretend to play fair. He's like Lenny Bruce with an inquiring mind and a video camera. - 80
New York Daily News
What he does do finally in this funny, refreshing movie is assert how unrestrained religiosity could guarantee the "end days" many of his subjects admit to looking forward to. - 75
USA Today
Those with a taste for irreverent humor and clear-eyed analysis will find it funny, enlightening and disturbing. - 75
New York Post
Maher's sense of humor deserts him in the end, though, when in an apocalyptic montage of fire and hate (bin Laden, Pat Robertson), he suggests all religions are equally bent on destruction of the Earth. It's fatuous to suggest that the Iraq war was launched because of religion or that belief in the Book of Revelation is the same as organizing terrorist attacks. - 70
Variety
To the film's credit, Maher never engages in Michael Moore-style gotcha tactics, but rather asks questions that raise more questions, in the form of a Socratic dialogue. To believers expecting a blind hatchet job, this will prove both thought-provoking and a bit disarming; skeptics may be surprised (as Maher is) by the occasionally smart replies to his queries. - 50
The Hollywood Reporter
By focusing so narrowly on religious fundamentalists and bigots while ignoring any spiritual dimension to religion, the film is not only being disingenuous but limits its audience to non-believers. - 50
ReelViews
The problem with the movie, whose title compresses "religious" and "ridiculous" into a single word, isn't that it milks more than one sacred cow but that it does so with minimal subtlety and intelligence. - 50
Village Voice
Bill Maher's one-man stand-up attack on religious fundamentalism is a dog that has more bark than bite--a skeptical, secular-humanist hounding of the hypocrites, amusingly annotated with sarcastic subtitles and clips from cheesy biblical spectacles.
