"Sex is a joke in heaven?" "The way I understand it, it's mostly a joke down here, too."

Year: 1999

Directer & written by: Kevin Smith

An abortion clinic worker with special heritage, two prophets and the 13th apostle have to stop two banished angels from getting back to heaven and thus destroying the whole world.

The story of Dogma starts as interesting, but it gets weirder and weirder towards the end, and gets more absurd. At the beginning I thought I'd like the movie more, but it just got more disappointing. I enjoyed the wisdom that was there every once in a while, and I loved the unique take on religion. But every once in a while it just felt like the whole movie was emphasizing religion too much. It makes no sense, since it's supposed to be a fantasy comedy about religion. 

But Dogma pointed out good and bad things about religion - and the bible! Scenes explaining the gender and race issues were so good. It was also great how it was pointed out how people do weird and violent things in the name of god. This is exactly what the two banished angels were doing: Loki and Bartleby killed people who had committed terrible sins. The deeds of these people seemed indeed horrific, but what gives two banished angels the right to take "law" into their own hands? They seemed mostly like some of those crazy Christian serial killers, who kill people committing sins, like the guy in Se7en.

But I noticed some slight homophobic, misogynistic and cisnormative themes there, that felt kind of tasteless. I don't know if it is the writer or the whole subject of the movie, religion, which is usually viewed as all of these things, whether there is a reason for it or not.

Sure, I get that the movie was from the 90's, but some of the effects were still so bad it was ridiculous. 

But honestly I really don't know what to say about this movie. It was a big disappointment, that's for sure. It was funny at times, but one of my acquaintances spoke so highly of this movie, I expected it to be better. Maybe he just has weirder taste in movies, or if not weirder, different. Dogma has that cult reputation, and it's definitely worth seeing. However a cult reputation doesn't guarantee it's any good.

☆☆☆☆☆

5 / 10