Larry Charles made Borat and directed Seinfeld for television. This time comedian and agnostic Bill Maher is his star and the subject is organised religion — which neither particularly likes. Standing in Israel amid the ruins of Megiddo (from which the word Armageddon is derived) Maher says doubt rather than faith is his watchword.

After all, who seriously believes in the Garden of Eden’s talking snake and other such myths? Not the decidedly unorthodox Catholic priest whom Maher interviews outside the Vatican, from which he has just been expelled. That’s all old-fashioned stuff, says the priest. But Maher then fails to question him about what he does believe.

That’s the trouble with Religulous —it is funny but never very acute. Maher homes in on people who seriously think they are God’s representatives on earth. “You need a Holy Ghost enema,” says one television evangelist from her platform. Maher’s targets are understandable, since such people exercise a huge influence on America. But it’s too easy.

There are some more sensible people interviewed, including a distinguished scientist who does not believe in the evolution of mankind. But even then the questions Maher asks just aren’t sharp enough — and he has the bad habit of commenting on the interviews spitefully afterwards.
Christians, Jews and Muslims get it in the neck, often deservedly so, but no religious representative is allowed to bandy words with him and come out even.

There are two smiling Muslims in an Amsterdam gay bar who say nothing very much, and the American Truckers for Jesus, who at least have a decent try at justifying their faith. It’s all pretty harmless fun — the old joke about a Catholic Jew taking his lawyer into confession (“Bless me father for I have sinned — and I think you know Mr Cohen”) still makes us laugh, and the excerpts from awful Biblical epics amuse us still further. But none of it stays in the mind very long.
The title, by the way, is a combination of religious and ridiculous.