If Youre Happy And You Know It

Comedian Bill Maher takes a satirical look at religion in a film that will anger believers and tickle the sceptics, yet leave a lasting impact on neither


Religulous
Director: Larry Charles
Presented by Bill Maher
Certificate: 16L
Running time: 101 mins
Maher is a US comedian who is probably less popular outside his home country than, say, John Stewart, Jay Leno or the Saturday Night Live team. He s a little older and shrewder. His satire is sleek rather than slapstick, and he s more of a cynical salon raconteur than he is a stand-up comic.

In this movie, Maher debunks all religions. The title is a nonsense term, compounded of two words religious and ridiculous . That s a clear signal that he s an agnostic who presents himself as an intelligent man bewildered by the implausibility of religious teachings, and by the extraordinary and often ludicrous things that their followers are inspired to do.

Maher is open about his background. His Jewish mother married a Catholic. He was raised as the latter until his father left the church because he and his wife wanted to use contraceptives, which is, of course, anathema to the religion. Maher discusses this candidly with his aged mother, who died shortly after the scenes featuring her were filmed. Read into that whatever you will.

Charles, who also directed Borat and the TV series Entourage, once again displays his quirky, no-holds-barred disrespect for almost everything and his comedy style stings more than it tickles. He and Maher make a great team, but I m not convinced that they have made a great movie.

The presenter is slick, quick and funny. Here s a typical sharp exchange between him and a homosexual man who says that he turned straight when he got straight with the Lord.
He tells Maher: Nobody is born gay.
Really? says Maher. Have you ever met Little Richard?
The ex-gay then states that all gays are unhappy. While the camera cuts away to the camp high jinks at a Gay Pride parade, Maher says: Some of them seem absolutely thrilled.

That s a neat punch-line, but it s hardly a deep insight and very little of this film s satire rises above the level of a flip, pointed wisecrack. Maher has nothing major to add to this debate other than his barbed, laconic tone.
His encounters with biblical fundamentalists who believe that every word in the good book was written by God s hand and that the world is only 5000 years old feel more like a showcase for the other person s folly than an actual debate. It s as if the very idea of discussing religion seriously is an act of silliness for Maher.

To his credit, he s an equal-opportunity cynic who satirises ultra-religious Jews, Christians and Muslims with the same ferocity. He goes to the Vatican, the Holy Land and even a Bible theme-park, where he interviews the actor who plays Jesus three times a day to a paying crowd who chew on popcorn and hot dogs during the show.

Bizarre and amusing as these sights are, they are neither provocative nor controversial and Maher is obviously pardon the bent metaphor preaching to the choir. By the end of the film, I felt that I had been on a tour of religious sideshows, without ever glimpsing the bigger issues of faith and commitment.

The result is a film about gestures rather than issues. It will infuriate the devout and delight the sceptics, but within six months everybody will have forgotten it.
Religulous is currently on circuit.

Quarantine
Cast: Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Jonathan Schaech
Director: John Erick Dowdle
Certificate: 16LV
Running time: 88 mins
You have to be a hard-core horror-movie junkie to get your money s worth out of this jerky, uneven tale of terror. Following in the style-trail of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, it s structured as a hand-held, poorly lit, candid camera account of an unfolding nightmare.

It starts neatly enough, with TV journalist Angela (Carpenter) and cameraman Scott (Steve Harris) setting out to spend a day with two top firefighters Jake (Hernandez) and George (Schaech). Conflagrations, however, are in short supply and simple digital camera they are sent to a derelict building where a strange rabies-like infection seems to be spreading through the residents.

By a grim accident the firefighters and TV team get locked in the house, and they witness scenes of carnivorous horror, recorded in restless, jumpy, grainy images on Scott s ever-probing camera.

It is soon clear that no one is coming to rescue them and when some nasty feral children appear, they decide to wage an us-or-them battle, all recorded on film, and it turns into Massacre Unplugged .

I gather this is a remake of a successful Spanish horror movie called REC, signifying the record button on the camera, but it has lost something in translation.
Quarantine is currently on circuit.

Flashbacks Of A Fool
Cast: Daniel Craig, Jodhi May, Helen McRory, Olivia Wiliams
Director: Baillie Walsh
Certificate: 16LV
Running time: 110 mins
Craig understands how easily his acting career could be cannibalised by his 007 role, so he frequently makes other films, far removed from the blockbuster genre. But Flashbacks of a Fool is not going to do much to enhance his reputation.

Coarse and vivitar mini digital camera maudlin, it s about Joe Scott (Craig), a successful actor on the skids. Too much liquor and cocaine, shared with a string of random, voraciously sexual women, has pushed Joe off track, and as he waits for his agent to call, he indulges in maudlin memories of the boy he used to be.

It s trash masquerading as an art film, and wide angle camera there s an anecdote about a decapitated woman so absurdpathetic that it would almost make the film worth seeing, were it not for the tedium of the rest of it.
Flashbacks of a Fool is currently on circuit.


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