The Catholic League raised quite a fuss over this film while it was still a sheep in the Miramax flock. The threats must have been serious enough to convince Disney and thereby Miramax to pass the film to Lion’s Gate Films. We were amazed that anyone, in the name of defending Catholicism or faith in general, would go through all the trouble of prosecuting a movie that hardly puts out enough substance to be funny, let alone offensive.

There is a rich irony proven here. Movies like Dogma that depict some view of Christ or God from other than strictly scriptural sources are usually convoluted, boring, or both. The hubbub and boycotts from the finger waggers give them more box office appeal and profit that if the film had been left alone. 

Twinkie, having once been a part of the religious righteous knows that fringe "orthodox" groups (dogmatists) need a Satan to attack in order to keep their fellow finger waggers writing tax deductible donation checks. Hollywood is an easy devil and Disney, with its theme parks and faltering stock prices and profits, is an easily intimidated target.

Alan Rickman steals the show, or at least what little show there is. Dogma fails at being funny even more abysmally than it fails at using humor to create insight. We recognize a great need for stories to elucidate our blind, dogmatic tendencies that lead us into bondage to following rules rather than allowing us to become more loving, more tolerant, and more compassionate. Despite pointing in the right direction along these lines, Dogma depends too heavily on the exposition of Christian myth in order for us to understand the action and the message. Character after character must lay out some part of the theory in order for the story to make sense, and to minimize the preaching effect, whenever more exposition is needed, another character conveniently appears to dish it out.

The only effective tool Dogma uses to deliver one of its messages is the constant shifting of God’s gender. To one character He is a He, and to another a She. After a while, we feel that whatever gender we assign Him/Her, does not describe the nature of God, but our personal perception of the One who transcends and incorporates gender.

Perhaps at its core, the problem with Dogma arises from a sensibility that has not really struggled with the meaning of faith and Catholicism, and is content with poking fun and raising questions, some even provocative, that amount to little more than a College bull session. There is no real story here. Ultimately the film is boring.