A Year of Bad Movies # 14 — “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)
IMDB Score: 3.7 out of 10
Metacritic Score: 20 out of 100
Rotten Tomatoes: 10 out of 100
It was probably a bad choice to watch a heady film such as “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
I did like the fact that Ben Stein was willing to exploit his previous film and television work for use in "Expelled." Way to go, Ben.
It’s currently 6:08 a.m. and I’ve been watching bad movies since 7 p.m. “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” may have brought up some interesting points but, in my sleep-deprived state, I had a hard time finding them beneath the blatant unfair and unarguably dickish moves on the filmmakers’ part.
There’s a popular rule when arguing or debating a theory. As soon as someone pulls the Hitler card and compares the other side to Nazis, they loose the argument. In “Expelled,” a documentary about intelligent design that tries to portray the science as a victim of censorship and misrepresentation, the filmmakers ultimately damned themselves by damning Darwinism with comparisons to Hitler.
Unfair usage of archive footage used to ridicule the opposition and blatantly one-sided interviews slowly ebbed at the open-mindedness I went into the movie with.
If “Expelled” showed my anything, it’s that the conflict of ideas behind evolution and intelligent design is a complicated and heated argument that is not going to be resolved or even properly summarized in the space I have allotted for this entry.
I could use this time to go over my views on the film, but a film such as “Expelled” is manufactured like a guided missile — targeted to appeal to those that already believe in intelligent design, reaffirming their beliefs all the way.
Nothing I say regarding my dislike for this film will work to change the minds of those that already think this film is a masterpiece. In fact, anything disparaging I say about this film will only serve as an invitation to an open forum on the topic and I do not wish for this blog to become a place for debate on evolution and intelligent design.
It’s this same reason why I won’t even bother to expound on my own beliefs regarding the subject — or how the movie did or did not affect them.
My project to see a year’s worth of bad movies was supposed to be a fun journey. So far, I’ve enjoyed myself as I’ve explored terrible cinema.
Unlike the other critically panned films I’ve seen so far, though, “Expelled” was not a fun film. There was no wit, no joy, only an unduly harsh exploration into a cultural cesspool of debate.
As far as my life goes, evolution is not an important subject matter. While it may or may not explain how I got here; as far as I can see, it won’t help me with the rest of my journey through life.
That being said, it’s an interesting subject matter that I enjoy hearing various, intelligent conversations about. “Expelled,” unfortunately, wasn’t the intelligent conversation I was hoping for.
It’s time to move on to the next film, having learned yet another example why it’s never a smart idea to invoke Hitler during a debate lest ye appear as a Nazi yourself.
