Dogma

6 Pages 1416 Words

The feature film “Dogma” was written and directed by Kevin Smith, the maker of “Clerks“, “Mallrats“, and “Chasing Amy.” Dogma gives it audience a look at faith, religion and overall spirituality in the most controversial way possible. Before its complete release, “Dogma” was protested heavily by many religious groups, the most notable of which was the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. These groups continue to protest the film and speak out against its creator Kevin Smith. The movie’s defendants say that the picture was a comedy and was never meant to be taken too seriously. The film was met with various different types of reviews. In order to take position on the subject of the film’s religious implications, we should look at those different kinds of reviews and decide for ourselves.
The most popular critique that I found basically implied that the movie was either good or bad, but it was easy to see how some people could be offended by it. Very few critics dared take an extreme stand at what they thought and left their views very open-ended. For example, Robert Butler of Knight Rider Newspaper says, “Smith’s satire isn’t flawless, as evidenced by his casting of Alanis Morissette as God. Reaching for whimsy, the filmmaker presents the Lord as a hand- standing dork. There was no disrespect intended; he would have had to cast Britney Spears to achieve that. But this is one occasion where the novelty of scooping up whatever floats along the pop-cultural Nile doesn’t work.” (MovieClub 3). There you can see that he obviously did not think extremely highly of the movie and its cast in the first place. However, nowhere in his critique of the movie did he say that he didn’t like it because of its religious comedy. He even goes on to say that the movie “manages to ask relevant spiritual questions”.
Also backing this opinion is Joan Ellis, a renowned Nebbadoon critic. E...