Dogma is indie film director Kevin Smith's highest profile flick yet, and he's still probing heavy, stimulating issues under cover of heavy cussing, sex jokes, and under-achieving cinematography. This time it's religion under the squirt gun, especially that of the Catholic variety (which Smith is). He delivers a comic book romp about two fallen angels (Affleck and Damon) trying to prove God fallible via a Catholic doctrine technicality so they can get back into heaven (thus undoing all of existence). Thrown together to try and stop the two from succeeding are the faithless last descendent of Christ (Fiorentino), Metatron the voice of God (Rickman), "prophets" Jay and Silent Bob (Mewes and Smith), the unknown black 13th Apostle named Rufus (Rock), and Serendipity the Muse (Hayek). A disclaimer at the beginning lets you know that even God has a sense of humor, to try and cool-off some steam from the ears of the easily offended.

Like The Simpsons, the film jabs Christianity in places that deserve to be jabbed. Unfortunately, it's not really that funny, or maybe you just have to be Catholic to be in on all the jokes. The make-you-snort lines are the overkill vulgar kind, like Jay's obsession with sex. The funniest "clean" dialogue is by Matt Damon as Loki, the former Angel of Death who wants his job back: arguing with fellow fallen angel Bartleby about the good ole days of raining sulfur on the wicked, innocently interrogating a couple sucking face on a bus about their marital status before blowing their heads off, freaking out a corporate executive with a fake voodoo doll, etc. Chris Rock has a few funny lines, but he's not given a lot to work with besides the "Jesus was black" trip. Half of the originally four-hour film had to be left on the cutting room floor, and you have to wonder if it was the half with the best laughs.

Dogma_touches tongue-in-cheek on some of today's popular but ignorant reinterpretations of Christianity, like Jesus being black, God being a woman, the upbeat commercial makeover of Christ ("Buddy Christ" is as much an indictment of evangelicals as of Catholics), and so on. Spliced generously amidst the crass humor are a number of scenes with serious preaching monologues showcasing Smith's personal Christian doctrine. Some of it is right on, like Serendipity the Stripper Muse's commenting that people treat God as a burden more than a blessing, the criticism of a Disneyesque company's commercial greed, the acknowledgement of a loving and graceful God so powerful his/her voice can't be heard directly by man without us being destroyed, and the horror of a hell so awful that one Muse-become-demon would rather be blinked out of existence than remain in the Pit.

There's also a lot of indirect commentary on how truth is defined in our culture by what we see in movies--a good point that makes it even more imperative that people think intelligently about this film rather than react with a jerk of the knee.

Unfortunately, the solid spiritual stuff is undermined by a few Unitarian-style comments like "It doesn't matter what you have faith in, as long as you have faith," and "It's better to have ideas than beliefs." Smith may be a Calvary Chapel-attending Catholic who claims Dogma is ultimately pro-faith, but wishy-washy popular thought like that seems more like self-pleasing pseudo-faith than any genuine respect for God. Still, Dogma is well worth seeing for anyone who doesn't mind Smith's trademark vulgar humor over-top serious commentary.
--Josh Spencer