| Overall Grade: |
C+ |
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| Story: |
C |
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| Acting: |
N/A |
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| Direction: |
B |
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| Visuals: |
N/A |
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Misses the point and trips on itself
by Georges (movies profile)
Oct 24, 2008
40
of
49 people found this review helpful
Ok, so I'm atheist and agree with the premise: religion is non-sense. I know he is simply preaching to the choir in this movie but, unfortunately, he fell victim to the same mindset that he is preaching against.
At the beginning, you see a "religious" christian guy walk out after he doesn't agree with where things are going with the discussion. It drives the point that people don't want to hear certain things and would rather close their minds and walk out. Later, he walks out himself when faced with a discussion he doesn't agree: jews against the state of Israel. The jewish rabbi looks perplexed that the discussion is over. Even the crew tells Bill to continue, but Bill can't go on. He would rather walk out in the middle. That was hypocrisy and it went downhill from there.
He goes on to cite ancient stories that sound very similar to Jesus' story. We are supposed to accept these stories as evidence of Christianity being a copy of other religions, and accept them as fact without questioning (since he obviously did the homework for us). I've heard them before, but presented with detail and in a much more intelligent way in the History channel, the movie Zeitgeist, and various books and websites. My gripe here is that he is doing the same thing the religious propagandists do: presenting a controversial interpretation as "fact".
Finally, he presents muslims in general as a violent and intolerant group during various times in the movie. He avoids showing christians or jews as violent for the most part, but focuses exclusively on the "threats" the muslims pose to world peace. He keeps bringing up the fact that he is half jewish and it is clear he supports zionism. This coming from a guy who is supposedly preaching against intolerance and religious prejudice!
He then goes on to conclude that religions (abrahamic ones for the most part) are the reason for war in the world. And that by eliminating religious beliefs, war will disappear... Well, this is complete non-sense too! My personal view is that religion is a tool used by those in power who stand to gain by manipulating people's hopes and fears. It is probably the most effective tool, but there are many others. Bill doesn't get that. He doesn't see that religion is just another ideology, to be replaced by other spiritual, political or economic ideologies that preach peace/war and love/hate of your supposed "enemy". Religion is easy because it doesn't have to make sense and it has a lot of fantastic elements that appeal to the kid, as well as to the animal, in all of us.
In the end it is an unsatisfying appeal to our common sense, that uses comedy as well as fear mongering to drive it's point. Dissapointing, but somewhat entertaining. |
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