 KSL Movie Show Review:...
EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED ** By Steve Salles Standard Examiner movie critic GO: if you want to see Ben Stein take Charles Darwin to task DON’T GO: if citing the Nazis as good Darwinian followers seems like a cheap shot Freedom of speech is a fundamental right in America and TV personality Ben Stein exercises his to the fullest in this documentary on the exclusion of “Intelligent Design” within the scientific community. Intelligent Design is the theory that some kind of outside force or intelligence had a hand in creating living things and that complex life forms could not have been created simply through a natural selection process as is suggested in Darwin’s theory. Stein cites several examples of college professors who have lost their jobs for merely suggesting that the possibility of I.D. be considered within the academic community. He insists that a free exchange of ideas on the subject should not be discouraged. And on that point, I fully agree. However, when he intersperses the interviews with archival footage of soldiers, military tanks and the building of the Berlin Wall to illustrate his point, it becomes more heavy-handed. He then goes off on a tangent about how Hitler and the Nazis were such devotees of Darwinism that they justified the Holocaust as helping nature improve the human race by eliminating its so-called “impurities.” He cites other radical perversions of Darwin’s Theory including the introduction of Eugenics in the late 1800’s - a social philosophy of improving human traits by genetic engineering leading to selective breeding and the destruction of defective genetic material. He continually calls for a civil debate between what he sees as the hugely flawed Darwinian Theory and Intelligent Design but then throws in these abhorrently distorted abuses of the previous that have no relevance to such a dialog. It would be like suggesting that religion can’t be right because look how many wars have been fought throughout human history over it. If he had simply stuck with the exchange of ideas and left out the lame black and white propaganda footage that’s clearly inserted to inflame the issue, the film would have offered more resonance. As is, he comes across as a one-note bully with very little factual information to support his claim that Intelligent Design should have a place within the scientific community. Rather than offer a multitude of reasons why I.D. could be a reasonable possibility (he briefly discusses it), he goes after scientists who claim to have no belief in a God and badger them as to why not. It comes off as less than civil and in no way seriously promotes his stated goal of giving Intelligent Design a legitimate shot at being discussed. And finally, my last beef with this flag-waving plea for freedom of speech is that “Exposed: No Intelligence Allowed” was not screened for critics so they could not exercise the very same freedom this film so ardently embraces. THE FILM: “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” OUR RATING: ** STARRING: Ben Stein, Richard Dawkins, Richard Von Sternberg, Caroline Crocker and Guillermo Gonzales BEHIND THE SCENES: Directed by Nathan Frankowski in his directorial feature film debut - filmed in Europe and the U.S.A. PLAYING: Running time: 90 minutes MPAA RATING: PG movies at a glance: EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED ** (PG) thematic material, some disturbing images and brief smoking. Ben Stein takes on the scientific community for not including the possibility of Intelligent Design in its research on the origins of life. He cites several people who have lost jobs for talking about it, but then brings in the Nazis to suggest that Darwin’s theory of Evolution is misguided. He lost me there.
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