Why two actors, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who bought an enormous amount of audience goodwill with “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” would choose to go out of their way to antagonize Christians with a $40 million investment on the line is beyond me. I guess their bigotry just got the best of them. Once you add advertising costs to that budget, you’re probably looking at another $25 million, which means the sci-fi comedy will probably have to clear somewhere in the area of $120 million just to break even. Good luck with that.

Word got out fairly early that “Paul” intended to sucker punch we Jesus freaks and it was a controversy that dogged the film in almost every interview I came across with the film’s two stars. Obviously, they tried to downplay the religious bigotry, which is odd. After all, if the entertainment industry is driven only by profit and greed, the Christian-bashing must have been a financial decision, not a political one — so why try to spin it away if it’s going to put more butts in seats?

When sympathetic, left-wing critics wondered if ”Paul’s” Christian bashing would be too much, you had to assume it was even worse than advertised. Well, according to our friends at Screen Rant, from both a decency  and artistic standpoint, it’s even worse than I thought it would be:

 Screen Rant’s Vic Holtreman:

While on the lam our trio runs into Kristin Wigg as Ruth Buggs, a fundamentalist Christian living in a trailer park, and oppressed by her drinking, redneck father. She’s a creationist and “young-Earther,” painted as about as naive and ignorant a person as you’re likely to ever meet. Once she meets Paul, her worldview is completely shattered and she immediately loses her faith. The scene in which it happens is actually pretty funny – she decides that she can now drink, cuss and “fornicate” (that’s a quote). She starts using her newfound permission to spout foul language, but she doesn’t quite have the hang of how to combine the proper words, and it’s funny for the first couple of times she does it (until the joke becomes overused, as the gag is revisited a LOT throughout the film). …

Let’s hit the controversy, now, shall we? The inclusion of a heavy anti-religion message feels very out of place, and I think even folks who don’t have “Judeo-Christian beliefs” (quote from the film) will sense that. The supposed humor is wielded like a club – there’s no subtlety like in Monty Python’s Life of Brian or Kevin Smith’s Dogma (two films that poked fun at religion that I enjoyed). Now ruminate on that for a moment – I’m calling a Monty Python film subtle in comparison to this. Some people have stated that in this regard the film is not mean-spirited, and on that I call complete B.S. It could hardly be meaner – including a scene at the very end where there might have been a chance for at least a small bit of grace (yes, that’s an appropriate word for this), but instead it was another slap in the face. Oh, there’s also a cheap shot at the fact police use, like, GUNS here in the U.S.. I wouldn’t mind if it was actually funny – but again, club, over the head.

All of which begs the question: Which are we going to see more of from “profit-driven” Hollywood in the future? Left-wing bigotry disguised as hipsterism or straight-forward action-adventure films that honor our military and explore universal themes involving duty, valor, self-sacrifice, and forgiveness?

Anyone want to bet on Hollywood chasing the profit over the political agenda — the same Vichy Hollywood that lost hundreds of millions of dollars on sixteen films and counting undermining their own country and its defenders at a time of war?

I didn’t think so.

In fact, ABC’s Castle web page today opens with the following pop-up window inviting visitors to take an extensive survey regarding the episode and the show in general (which I dutifully filled out):

We would like to invite you to participate in a short survey about the episode of CASTLE that aired on 2/28/11. This episode featured Castle and Beckett rejoining Fallon’s task force, the detectives suspecting a former U.S. soldier of planning a terrorist attack, and Castle and Beckett partnering with a Syrian official to track down the bomb.

Having seen the episode, I can assure you that the story cannot be fairly characterized as bigoted or anti-Christian.

The episode, “Countdown,” is the conclusion of a two-parter in which the show’s protagonists (NYC police detective Kate Beckett and her unpaid-consultant partner, mystery writer Richard Castle) attempt to prevent a mass murder through detonation of a nuclear “dirty bomb” in Manhattan. (Note: spoilers hereafter.)

In part 1, viewers were led to believe that the conspirators were Muslims from foreign countries. In “Countdown,” however, it soon becomes clear that the main villain is non-Muslim (though not characterized as a Christian), and the Muslims in the story are being used as scapegoats by him and his associates in a rather silly and fanciful scheme to revive Americans’ interest in our recent Middle East wars by exploding a dirty bomb in Manhattan and planting evidence so that it will be blamed on Muslim terrorists.

However, unlike in other stories of this kind which I have seen in the past couple of years, a credible character—Castle himself—expresses sympathy with the man’s aims while of course decrying his intent to commit mass murder and mayhem to achieve them. It is in fact rather surprising to see Castle do so, and I think that this element in itself redeems the episode entirely.

In addition, the narrative also points out that a character initially seen as unattractive and hardhearted is driven to act that way out of unresolved grief over the death of his wife in tower two of the World Trade Center, her having “ridden the tower down” to her death at the hands of Muslim terrorists. This reminder can hardly be seen as pro-Muslim or anti-Christian.

In no way, in my view, can this episode be fairly characterized as anti-Christian, pro-Muslim, or bigoted. As noted above, I find the story’s terrorism scheme to be fanciful, but I believe it to have been motivated by a desire to create a relatively surprising resolution to the mystery (and, alas, failing to make it either convincing or surprising, in my estimation), not any sense of prejudice or desire to make a political point. To the extent that the story is less than laudable, the reasons are aesthetic, not political or religious.

Moreover, the first sequence of the episode, in which Castle and Beckett are locked in a subzero refrigerated container with no way of escaping or informing anyone of their predicament, is an extraordinarily powerful scene and quite poignant, something regular or even casual viewers of the serious should not miss. The two characters face a slow, painful death together while individually confronting what appears to be a rather desperate love for each other which neither can find the courage to express. The scene suggests so much about the human condition, how one’s love for another can create an intense fear that makes that emotion all but unendurable and impossible to admit.

A similarly powerful and understated dramatic moment occurs when Castle tells his mother and his daughter to leave town but cannot admit why and insists that they tell no one else, lest it lead to a citywide panic. Later, Castle realizes that another character faces such emotional wrenching and vexing moral dilemmas every day.

Moments such as these are rather unusual in contemporary drama and are to be praised. Yes, “Countdown” has aesthetic flaws, but in my view they’re mistakes, not manifestations of prejudice.

This article originally published at The American Culture.

New York Post critic Kyle Smith has seen the film and describes it as “a full-on attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. It might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros.”

Although the commercials and theatrical trailers have presented the film as a cute comedy and made no allusion at all to any religious angle, much less a concerted case for atheism, Smith reports that the basis of the film is its attack on religion:

Gervais delights in what a faith-based society would call blasphemy, setting up an imaginary world in which no one ever lies. Except his character, who spreads what Gervais obviously sees as the biggest lie of all: Belief in God.

Smith’s description of the film makes it clear that the protagonist’s behavior represents a simpleminded atheist’s idea of the meaning of religion:

There is a “Man in the Sky,” he says, who is looking down at all of us and is responsible for everything that happens. Yes, he explains to one woman, he gave your mom cancer — but he’s also responsible for curing her. The people aren’t happy that “The Man in the Sky” is behind all human suffering. “F— The Man in the Sky!” cries one citizen, and the crowd begins to get angry. A magazine cover exclaims, “Man in the Sky Kills 40,000 in Tsunami!” But Gervais’s character insists that whatever damage the Man in the Sky causes, he eventually makes up for it all in the end by providing a beautiful mansion for everyone after they die, at least for those who don’t commit three or more immoral acts, and by making it so that everyone can reunite with their loved ones in the next life.

Smith concludes by stating that the film is mean-spirited overall and that audiences are unlikely to be pleased by Gervais’s attack on their basic beliefs while critics will enjoy this latest attempt to epater la bourgeousie:

Gervais is an atheist, which is fine, but his mean-spiritedness (even before the atheism theme enters the movie, it’s sour and misanthropic) and the film’s reduction of all religion to an episode of crowd hysteria are not going to be warmly received. Except maybe by critics.

In a comment on Smith’s article, a reader quotes from Gervais’s long, poorly written, and unapologetic but highly defensive and spectacularly clichéd response to the building controversy on the film, published on the actor’s blog. Here’s Gervais’s post, with some responses of my own (in brackets):

A couple more web sites have picked up on a few Christians (not all – most Christians have a sense of humour) saying that The Invention of Lying is blasphemous.

Here are my seven deadly sins of jumping to conclusions:

1. No one has seen the film. [False--SK]

2. Even if the film suggests there is no God, it is a fictional world. [a truly pathetic evasion.] One of my favourite films is ‘It’s a wonderful life’ and at no time am I offended by the suggestion in this wonderful work of fiction that there is a God. [Nice but irrelevant.]

3. If the film was not set in a fictional world and suggested there is no God then that’s fine too, as it is anyone’s right not to believe in God. [and it's other people's right to criticize a filmmaker for what he chooses to put in his movies.]

4. By suggesting there is no God you are not singling out Christianity. [but you certainly are including Christianity, so Christians have a right to answer back.]

5. Not believing in God cannot be blasphemous. Blasphemy is acknowledging a God to insult or offend etc. [Gervais's atheism is not the complaint: characterizing God as Gervais allegedly does in the film is what people are concerned about, and it is definitely a case of blasphemy if the film is at all as described.]

6. Even if it was blasphemous, which it isn’t [false], then that’s OK too due to a little god I like called “freedom of speech.” [freedom of speech is not at issue. Blasphemy and contempt for other people's beliefs are the topic of discussion.] That said, I am not trying to offend anyone [but offending them all the same, while hiding behind a fig leaf of good intentions.]. That would be a waste of such a privilege.

7. I am an atheist, but this is not atheist propaganda [Well, if it looks like atheist propaganda, and it walks like atheist propaganda, and it quacks like atheist propaganda...]. When creating an imaginary world you have to make certain decisions. We decided also that there would be no surrealist art, no racism, no flattery, no fiction, no metaphor, and no supernatural. However, we decided that apart from that one “lying gene”, humans evolved with everything else as we have it today. Joy, hope, ambition, ruthlessness, greed, lust, anger, jealousy, sadness, and grief. It’s just a film [another pathetic evasion]. If any of the themes in it offend you or bore you, or just don’t make sense to you, you should put everything right when you make a film [How revoltingly arrogant and elitist. As if the only way to answer a person were to go back in time, pursue the same career they have taken up, and answer them in the same form. This is a truly astonishing insult to his potential audience.].

I really hope everyone enjoys the film [Even though he lives in the relatively unchurched UK, it's quite amazing that he can be so grotesquely ignorant as to have imagined that the great majority of his potential American audience would not find this movie idea offensive.].’ and keeps an open mind [regarding whether they like blasphemy? That is even more arrogant than the last sentence of his deadly sin number seven.]. I believe in peace on Earth, and good will to all men. [Not all harmful things are done with ill will. Gross negligence can be just as destructive, and merits an equal response.] I do as I would be done by, and believe that forgiveness is one of the greatest virtues [but of course he claims to have nothing in his film that requires forgiving.]. I just don’t believe I will be rewarded for it in heaven [It seems likely he's right about that much.]. That’s all.

It will be interesting to see whether audiences take to the film as more people find out what The Invention of Lying is all about. Telling your audience that their most profound beliefs are stupid and wrong seems a fine plan for eliciting positive reviews from elitist movie critics but a very bad way to lure people into movie theaters.