Daily Nebraskan

Issue date: 4/22/08 Section: Features

There's a scene near the end of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" that illustrates the documentary's disastrous flaw - or at least one of them.

The film's star, Ben Stein, stands inside Charles Darwin's former home outside of London, staring imploringly into the eyes of a seated statue of the great biologist. Soft piano music sets the tone, as the camera pans around the two titans of thought, one long dead and one now rebelliously challenging the status quo.

The implication is clear. Of the great martyred thinkers who dared stand up to scientific dogma, there was Galileo, there was Darwin and now there is Ben Stein.

"Expelled" never had much substance to begin with. But if Stein, a former Nixon lawyer and game-show host, hadn't acted like a smug, self-righteous prick throughout the entire film, it might have been more effective.

The documentary, directed by Nathan Frankowski, begins with Stein strolling onto a stage to give a speech to what looks like a college-age crowd. The United States, he explains, is losing its freedom of speech in the realm of science when it comes to issues of evolutionary theory.

Then we're off to New York, Washington, D.C., and a bunch of other U.S. cities, where Stein interviews scientists who have been disciplined by the academic community for embracing creationism and intelligent design, the concept that nature is too complex for evolution to produce.

The interviews are broken up by brief soundbytes from prominent scientists, such as Eugenie Scott and Richard Dawkins, who have been at the forefront of the creationism-evolution debate. They're also broken up by priggish mutterings from Stein.

Nothing is particularly interesting about any of these interviews. No one says anything that hasn't been repeated ad nauseam in the creationism-evolution culture wars.

So, to amp up the drama, "Expelled" goes international.

Stein travels to France, where he interviews the only person in the movie who comes off as more arrogant than himself, a man who blames the Holocaust on the theory of evolution. Then we're whisked away to a former Nazi concentration camp where a tour guide explains to Stein how the gas chamber worked.

Wait, wait, wait. Wasn't this a film about intelligent design?

That's fatal flaw number two of "Expelled." Documentaries are supposed to make a coherent argument using evidence to back up a thesis.

Instead, "Expelled" presents a bunch of arbitrary evolution-bashing with no backbone.

It offers no clear definitions of intelligent design or evolution, nor any empirical evidence for either concept.

The tone of "Expelled" resides insidiously between Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." You just can't pull that tone off without any substance.

That's why the film's ending scenes, which alternate between Stein's auditorium speech and Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech, become unintentionally humorous.

The best part of "Expelled" is the music, which ranges from Johnny Cash to John Lennon to The Killers. The problem is every time a song begins, you want to curse and throw things at the screen because the songs are being used sarcastically (for example, "Imagine").

One last fatal flaw to mention: Stein, if you remember, is the guy in the "Clear Eyes" commercials. He voice has that folksy, dumpy quality that simply drives you insane.

Thank God the expulsion is short (90 minutes).

joshswartzlander@dailynebraskan.com

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