Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)

Many movie fans will know Ben Stein as the world's most boring high school teacher, droning out his repetitions of "Bueller...? Bueller...?", but sadly there is another face to him. In fact, his most famous role as an educator seems profoundly inappropriate, given the intellectual vacuity of his "documentary". Obviously personal opinion will have a huge effect on the enjoyment of such a polarised film (and I am no creationist or advocate of Intelligent Design), but Stein's film can be torn to pieces without so much as a reference to its content. Merely its inception and construction speak to a film that is less interested in portraying information and more focussed on pushing a certain viewpoint. Its construction is the less odious of its flaws, so that's where to start. There is a slang term among documentary-makers for the incessant need to illustrate important words with a cut to a relevant image, known as a "Lord Privy Seal". This is a trap Stein falls into all too regularly, sexing up his talk of pro-I.D. scientists losing their jobs with ample shots of violence and repression from the midnight of the 20th century. But this is merely poor and condescending film-making; Stein's real crime is his intellectual dishonesty in putting together this project. A sizeable portion of the film is dedicated to building a connection between Darwinism and the "master race" ideology of National Socialism. Stein supports this idea with an extract from Darwin's The Descent of Man that is so mangled that Stein makes the quote say almost the precise opposite of Darwin's intent. Coupled with the fact that many of the interviewees (notably Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Meyers and Eugenie Scott) allege that they were told that the title of the documentary was Crossroads, unaware that they were involved in a project for advancing Intelligent Design. I was keen to see what kind of arguments that Intelligent Design handles better than the Theory of Evolution, but sadly Stein had missed out the part where a documentary needs to have something more than opinions. This film seems to manage to dishonour both the scientific endeavour, the very Intelligent Design theory that it wants to serve, and simple honesty itself.


Presenting my patronising Lord Privy Seal for Mr. Stein.