POSTHOC RATING:  ***

“Don’t write movies about religion,” a screenwriting teacher passionately cautioned a group of us acolyte’s once. “You’ll only offend people and no one will want to make it.”

Obviously, Kevin Smith, the writer-director of Clerks and Chasing Amy did not take that class.        

Dogma Smith’s eagerly anticipated latest film has its problems.  It’s long.  It’s loaded with lumpy passages of theological dialogue, which, if you are not Catholic, or for better or worse, don’t even know what Catholic is, will fly high over your head. The film occasionally overloads its jokes and some of them miss. And Smith shows that he’s not an action comedy director. 

But still, it’s one of the films from this last year of the Millennium worth seeing, for its unusual passion, exuberance, fine cast and all-out (pardon the Yiddish) chutzpah. 

The plot is this: two renegade and quarrelsome Angels, Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck) who have spent the better half of existence sentenced to the Purgatory of Wisconsin have discovered an obscure loophole in Catholic Theology that will allow them back into Heaven, if they go to a Church near Asbury Park, New Jersey (where George Carlin ministers to the flock with a “Catholicism WOW!” Campaign, complete with a thumbs-up winking Jesus), go inside and come back out through its arch.  Unfortunately, there’s a loophole in the loophole. Doing this will prove God’s fallibility and --poof—there goes existence and everyone and everything in it.

They must be stopped.  And whom do They (in the person of Metatron, the Voice of God, perfectly played with dour exasperation by Alan Rickman) saddle with the cosmic task?  Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), a secretary at an abortion clinic, who doesn’t believe in God at all, much less angels and demons. She’s so skeptical that when Metatron pops up in her bedroom, she ruins his best suit with a fire extinguisher. 

And so she sets off on a pilgrimage for New Jersey to save the world from Loki and Bartleby, accompanied by two of the most unlikely prophets ever: Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (writer-director Smith). As far as they know, the only reason they’re coming along is the opportunity to get laid by Bethany. 

Also helping Bethany on her mission is the 13^th Apostle, Rufus (Chris Rock), cut out of the New Testament because he’s black, and Serendipity (Salma Hayek), the Muse of Inspiration who’s working in a roadside strip joint when we meet her.  

Out to stop Bethany is Satan’s favorite agent, Azrael (Jason Lee) a neat and fussy demon who heads up a vicious gang of skateboarders determined to help Bartleby and Loki accomplish their mission.  They all collide at the steps to the Church with a slapstick apocalyptic fury part The Wild Bunch and part Animal House.  

There are many, of course, who have not been eagerly anticipating the film. Those of them for whom Faith means putting on blinders, will be offended by Dogma.  It’s sad, because they’re the ones would need and understand it most. Its irreverence is not towards the Godhead itself, but our shallow, ill-thought ideas about God.  We confuse our visions of God with the reality of God. It’s not an attack on faith, but on its fearful blindness. For that reason alone, its controversial nature will reach farther than the film itself.  Many will say, “I don’t need to drink poison in order to know it’s poison.”  But isn’t it also true that those who are easily offended by alternative ideas lack strength in their beliefs?  

Of course, it’s not poison, it’s only a movie, as it takes hilarious pains to point out in the opening title (warning: platypus lovers will also be grievously offended). “People see a Charlton Heston epic and they think they’re theologians,” Bartleby the Angel mutters at one point and he’s quite right.  Thinking about seriously about God in this materialistic age (and the film takes the existence of God as a given: atheists won’t like it, either), requires smashing a few totems and people don’t like having their totems smashed.  Especially in a medium as potentially far-reaching as film.

A friend of mine once said, “There are only two people in the world with shame: Catholics and people who have been touched by them.”  Kevin Smith seems to have broken the chains of that shame and brought us this film that is both reverent and irreverent.  It’s written and directed with a crazy, sloppy energy and bursting with ideas on sin and redemption, life and death and devils and angels.  Much of it may miss non-Catholics, but you’ll be carried along by its exuberant whacked-out humor and dynamite cast, which includes both Bud Cort and Alanis Morisette as God.  Ms. Morisette’s Deity is so appealingly winsome in Her tacky gown and plaid boxers you want to take Her home (or at least to Saks 5^th Avenue to get better raiments). (Psst: She can’t do headstands either).

Kevin Smith wants to both talk seriously about God and show us a great time while doing it.  He doesn’t completely succeed in both tasks.  His flair for verbal comedy is superior to his slapstick skills (which are clumsy and half-thought out) and his theological pursuits takes us to some tangled dead spots. But the film is not only often very funny, but suspenseful and (thanks in part to Fiorentino’s performance) touching.  The bravery and spirit Smith and his cast bring to the project gives it a freshness and shine the religious movies of old Hollywood have long lost and can never hope to regain. For many, our relationship with God has evolved from simplistics to something thorny and complex.  Smith deserves high marks for at least plunging in.