Last night we went to see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Going into it I was unaware of all the controversy about this film because evidently I either (a) travel through a different orbit, or (b) live under a rock. Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel gave it a one star (*) in our local paper here in Duluth. A quick jump to RottenTomatoes.com shows that the critics in general are in agreement that this is a bad film. Reviewer Ken Hanke’s remarks reflect the majority view: “Junk science meets even junkier filmmaking in Expelled -- a no more shameless, stupid and loathsome piece of propaganda has ever skulked its way into the theater.”At the end of the day it is criticized for being biased, one sided, and manipulative with a 9% favorable rating by the critics. But these same critics loved Michael Moore’s biased, one-sided Fahrenheit 9/11, which they described as “Extremely one-sided in its indictment of the Bush administration, but worth watching for the humor and the debates it'll stir.” And this one from Bill Clark of TheBalcony, “Moore's best and most mature effort to date.
Reviews at the IMDB site are no kinder. One reviewer calls Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed “pure unadulterated crap” and others label it “useless propaganda.” Another quoted the New York Times reviewer who calls it a “conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.” Another declares the film to be “willfully ignorant and intentionally deceptive.”
Yet the Expelled raises a number of good questions. Like, are scientists permitted to pursue honest doubts about Darwin’s opus? Is there true freedom of inquiry in academia? Are some questions off limits because they violate the Sacred Edicts of Political Correctness?
But wait, why is it that Michael Moore can raise questions in an entertaining way, and Ben Stein cannot? Michael Moore can manipulate and Expelled cannot? Who’s kidding whom?When Bernard Goldberg blew the whistle on bias within the network news, he was immediately persona non grata at CBS. Admitting the truth that everyone on the inside already knew… well, this is an unpardonable sin. Despite three decades of outstanding work, Goldberg was immediately marginalized and put out to pasture.
As you read the reviews by movie critics (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/) on these two films (Fahrenheit 9/11 and Expelled) it is apparent that the critics are merciless toward one of these films and falling all over themselves to praise the other. I find it pretty revealing.
As for me, I would strongly recommend seeing this film. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is well done, entertaining and thought provoking. The defenders of Darwin were not pretending to believers here. Their words (men like Dawkins, for example) were not twisted to produce different meanings from what they declare here. The film is not dishonest, and the concerns of those who created this film are not fabricated from tissues of fantasy. In point of fact, the amusing thing is how fantastically bizarre the purportedly scientific explanations can become once you wipe out the possibility of God as part of the equation in life’s origins.
