Yes, Dogma is insulting, but only to blasphemy

By Peter Howell
Toronto Star Movie Critic

It may be overkill to suggest it, given that Kevin Smith is already considered the Great Satan by extreme Catholics, but the chief problem with his new movie Dogma is that it isn't blasphemous enough.

Anyone following the progress of this film - its dumping by Disney, its damnation by righteous rightists - would have reason to think the New Jersey fan boy behind Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy had traded slacker irony to launch a hellish assault on God Herself.

He hasn't. In satirizing the teachings of the Catholic Church, always a ripe subject for comedy, he has chosen to be shot for a lamb rather than a sheep, bleating obscenities and stupid gags rather than attempting anything more daring.

What sting is there in a movie whose creator describes it as ``a love letter to God,'' which begins with a long disclaimer about how it's just ``a work of comedic fantasy'' and which begs us to remember that ``even God has a sense of humour?'' Granted, the disclaimer was ordered by Miramax's Harvey Weinstein, in a futile attempt by the studio chief to dim the predictable backlash by knee-jerk conservatives who hadn't even seen the film.

But Lenny Bruce and Sam Kinison would surely roll over in their graves to see what passes for shock humour and blasphemy in 1999.

Dogma doesn't so much challenge the masses as it preaches to the converted, the loyal frat-house contingent who can't get enough of the cynical, profane blowhards who populate Smith's films.

For this movie, the frat house contains a copy of the Catholic catechism, since the filmmaker's script alternates obscenities with windy descriptions of such terms as scions, seraphims and plenary indulgences.

It starts off smartly, as Smith's films usually do, with George Carlin playing a high-fiving New Jersey Catholic leader named Cardinal Glick, who wants to prove that ``Christ didn't come to Earth to give us the willies.''

He unveils a new Church program called Catholicism Wow!, symbolized by a statue of a grinning, thumbs-up Christ. Older Catholics will recognize it as a sharp jab against the liberal reforms of Vatican II during the Swinging Sixties, reforms which, ironically, Smith's harshest critics would deem worthy of satire.

Had he continued mocking the divisions between liberal and conservative Catholics, who fight each other while the world turns ever more towards the secular, Smith might have crafted a comedy worthy of outrage.

Instead he opts for a horror story straight out of the Old Testament (or maybe science fiction), in which angels, demons, apostles and philistines talk, talk and talk about whether a suddenly discovered loophole in Church law is enough to prove God fallible, and thus cause the destruction of the universe.

A crowd of celebrities are on hand for the yakfest, including Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as rebel angels Loki and Bartleby, Linda Fiorentino as a conflicted Catholic saviour named Bethany, Chris Rock as the jive-talking 13th Apostle Rufus, Salma Hayek as the muse Serendipity and Alan Rickman as Metatron, the Voice of God.

They are occasionally funny, as in the scenes with Carlin and with many of the straight lines delivered by the well-cast Fiorentino, who almost single-handedly keeps this picture from falling off the rails.

They are also occasionally profound, as when a character complains, in the words of Smith, ``You people don't celebrate your faith, you mourn it.''

Too often, though, Smith settles for obscenity instead of observation and childishness instead of comedy.

Illustrating what happens when you give a filmmaker too much money, he inserts a digitally created ``poop monster'' into the action. The disgusting creation adds nothing to the story, but it does fit in with all the low-brow anus and penis jokes.

Playing straight to his Internet fan base, Smith also gives way too much screen time to the recurring characters Jay and Silent Bob, played by childhood friend Jason Mewes and by Smith himself. The duo function as the movie's geek chorus, constantly framing Bethany's quest in sexual terms.

Smith doesn't just drive his jokes into the ground; he buries them, digs them up, and drives them into the ground again.

His directing remains as static as ever. He can't helm a fight or action scene to save his soul, and he puts two murder scenes off-camera rather than risk bungling them. He's happiest when he's just lining up a collection of talking heads.

Nor can he figure out how to end Dogma, which at a running length of two hours, five minutes, is at least a half hour past salvation.

Without giving it away, let's just say that choosing fading rocker Alanis Morissette to play God is the kind of lame pop-cult pandering that gives blasphemy a bad name.

False idols, indeed