Win Ben Stein’s Sympathy |he character actor, game show host, and former Nixon speechwriter adds “propagandist” to his résumé with his new doc Expelled.
Vadim Rizov, Village Voice | “The thesis of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a propaganda “documentary” co-written and hosted by Ben Stein is this: teaching Darwinian evolution but ignoring intelligent design in America’s public schools and universities is the biggest threat to American freedom today—bigger, presumably, than Al Qaeda, Iraq, and the recession combined. IDers protest that they’re simply interested in secular alternatives to Darwinian evolution; their scientific opponents, meanwhile, are potential Communists and Nazis. Bizarre and hysterical.”
Andy Klein, LA CityBeat | “In its simplest terms, Expelled sees Hitler’s push for racial cleansing as a natural result of Darwin’s ideas. Whoa. Big Fucking Whoa. The presence of this argument should be enough to make one suspicious of the film’s trustworthiness, but the presentation of it is far worse. Stein uses his own Jewishness as a sanctimonious cudgel, heading to a concentration camp to remind us that the Holocaust was evil... and to imply that some of that evil derives from Darwin’s studies. At one point, discussing his experience there on a park bench, he expresses grief by covering his face with his hands. The gesture has all the dramatic verisimilitude of a 30th take; Stein’s limited skill as an actor has never been more apparent.”
Nick Schager, Slant | “Court actions against intelligent design curriculums are dismissed via a movie clip of a judge making funny faces and twirling his gavel, and the scientific community’s supposed fear of scrutinizing Darwinism is explained via the sight of Dorothy pulling the curtain back on the Wizard of Oz. To their film’s catastrophic detriment, Stein and director Nathan Frankowski fail to examine the obvious and crucial religious underpinnings of the ‘intelligent design movement,’ whose onscreen adherents deliberately refuse to speculate on the source of this creative ‘intelligence’ because their opinion on the identity of this fundamental biological architect—God—would conclusively reveal Expelled as propaganda for a Christian-right movement whose own champion, Ronald Reagan, Stein ultimately depicts as his spiritual counterpart.”
MaryAnn Johanson, The Flick Filosopher | “We cannot dismiss this movie, because anyone who cares about public discourse in America and anyone who cares about the ongoing war on scientific literacy in this country needs to see it in order to arm herself against the idiocy. You need to see this movie because these people are not going away, not without a fight from people who understand where they’re coming from.”
