By BAADASSSSS

Religulous
Directed by Larry Charles
Starring Bill Maher, Tal Bachman,
Larry Charles
Rated R
Release Date: October 1, 2008

Religion has always been one of the few topics that seem to be off limits in our national discourse. Any mere mention of the word can set off arguments and the occasional war before the combatants can take a step back and figure out why they were fighting in the first place. So in a nation that is more openly religious than any other in the world having a civilized discussion about religious beliefs and what leads us to believe in them still remains mostly taboo. But atheists, who once were one of America’s silent minorities, are coming out strong with their balls firmly placed on the table. Books such as Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion have climbed the best seller lists. Now the atheist movement is heading full steam ahead into cinemas, and the star of Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death is leading the charge.

Bill Maher, the host of HBO’s Real Time, has teamed with Larry Charles, the former Seinfeld writer and director of Borat (and also the director of the notorious Bob Dylan bomb Masked and Anonymous) to make a feature-length documentary about his favorite comedic target — organized religion — is a prospect too good to be true. Thankfully the resulting film Religulous (an appropriate amalgamation of the words “religion” and “ridiculous”) fulfills the promise that team-up would guarantee by being provocative, thought-provoking, and most importantly funny as hell.