Directed by Nathan Frankowski. (STC) 90 min. Opens June 27.
Nixon apologist turned game show host Ben Stein makes no bones about where he stands in this blustery attempt to intensify the most dubious battlefront of America’s culture wars, the quasi-debate about the quasi-science of intelligent design. Likewise, this doc’s strong-arm methods swiftly snuff out any possibility of finely nuanced discourse — instead, it hysterically puffs up the threat of Big Science’s “Darwinian establishment” against the few scientists brave enough to suggest there may have been a divine hand in our creation.
Proponents of evolutionary theory are variously represented by images of the builders of the Berlin Wall, guillotine-happy Frenchmen, Khrushchev and his cronies, The Wizard of Oz and Charlton Heston’s simian tormentors in Planet of the Apes. Director Nathan Frankowski tops himself in the would-be-stirring finale in which footage of Stein speaking to a crowd of adoring student types is crosscut with Ronald Reagan delivering his “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech. Ballsy? You bet!
Of course, there’s no reason that political conservatives can’t work the same mojo as lefty polemicists like Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald. But Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed frequently insults the intelligence of its viewers, pleading for the necessity of open and reasoned debate while stooping to crassly manipulative manoeuvres like sending Stein on a tour of concentration camps and effectively blaming the Holocaust not just on Darwin, but Richard Dawkins, too. Having successfully tapped into the market of Bible thumpers and home schoolers stateside, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is already a hit, but rarely has a movie title come with such an appropriate addendum.