awful (review)
Don't know what the main user reviewer is even talking about. Good grief, this is bad. Nothing but an almost random hodgepodge of anti-religionism, directed at the usual straw-man version of Christianity put forth by atheists and anti-religionists looking for an easy target, a version which--while of course adhered to by millions--nevertheless is NOT the experience of Christianity that millions of others have, and yet whoever conceived and wrote this film simply declares over and over that "most" Christians, or all or nearly all by implication, believe X or Y, where X or Y are obviously ignorant and/or superstitious.
The one minor virtue the film has is that it does include interviews with a very few reasonable Christians (or otherwise believers in God) who do not play the straw-man part outlined by the writers as Christianity writ large. However, their inclusion makes the viewer wonder whether the writing is simply sloppy (because it so often says that Christians in general believe this or that stupid thing, then turns around and interviews people who, by their very presence and words, serve as contrary examples), or whether this is simply an attempt to gain some miniscule level of credibility to the other portions of the film (the "statements against interest" thing, where the obligatory "opposition" is interviewed).
The truth is, in any category of humans you can find examples of ignorance and superstition. I could use the logic of this film to denounce women, Asians, black people, white people, mathematicians, etc. Particularly if I can play to a popular image of one of those categories and bring up one or two examples that seem to confirm it, I can simply declare that women "are" this way without any statistical proof or any attempt to prove the null hypothesis. This is precisely why the film is so lacking in value: It makes no attempt to do anything other than to hand out candy to anti-religionists that they've already eaten before, because it never attempts to prove anything. It just seems to know it'll get applause here and there for really sticking it to the Christians.
The film also indulges itself in the Internet-age habit of declaring a thing to be true merely because it can be thought of as true, or that A "is" B merely because I can say it. You "can" view religion as being in the same category of marketing, and then declare it to be made of the same stuff. I "can" view a rhino as a car, because it has four things touching the ground, weighs a lot, and goes forward and backward, but what is the meaning of doing so?
Then there is the fact of the misleading title, which would lead a viewer to believe the film is about using religion to make money, or--and this is what the film purports to be about, before it goes off on its hodgepodge scavenger hunt--that it is about the similarities between the way religion is "sold" and the way other products are sold. But: 1) The film does next to nothing in the way of distinguishing between the _selling_ of religion and the basic truth or falsehood of religion or belief in God, and so ends up with nothing more than the usual scattershot indications of contempt for religion (as when one interviewee scoffs that when the Bible refers to "the four corners of the Earth," this must mean that the writer thought the world was flat--as if our use of the exact same phrase today means that--and all of this in a discussion about how the Bible surely is not inspired); and 2) it tries to accomplish its purpose, again, merely by declaring A as B, and then using comically oversimplistic or anecdotal examples and/or illustrations to "support" its arguments. (Cf. its segments on hell and heaven.) There is not even the pretense of any evidence that "most" or "nearly all" Christians believe in the version of Christianity being depicted here.
Actually, the whole film reminds me again of just how condescending and contemptuous anti-religionists can be, certainly more than a match for any Falwell or Swaggart.
I'm all for a good critique of how religion is practiced, but this isn't it. Not even close. Save your money, if that's what you're expecting. On the other hand, if you want to see a film that lets you cheer yourself on for already believing what the filmmakers believe, in a smarmy and condescending way, rather than grappling with the fact that millions of Christians are nothing like the ones depicted in this film, then go ahead and see it, and ignore the fact that it's only preaching to the choir on an issue that is much too important for that.
I ran across this film's trailer in the extras of one of the Cinema Libre films, a studio that puts out sometimes a bit amateurish but (so far, from what I've seen) gripping and relevant subject matter about hunger, poverty, colonialism, and human rights. So I certainly am not averse to nontraditional or difficult subject matter. It's just that this particular one is not any good.