Where In The World Is Ben Stein's Money?

I last wrote about Libertas long ago in an ancient, primitive time known as March 7, 2008. I envisioned that critiques of Libertas would be at least a semi-regular feature here. There turned out to be a couple of problems with that goal. Mainly, I could easily make this entire site anti-Libertas if I wanted to, which I don't. They provide so much material worthy of commentary and mockery that it's hard to know where to begin. One of their favorite tricks is not only to criticize and ridicule movies like Rendition or Stop-Loss with overt criticisms of American policy but also to whip out their National Review Magnifying Glasses and thoroughly pour over seemingly inoffensive movies for signs of anti-Americanism. For instance, did you know that last fall's The Mist and next week's Iron Man will most likely both be on the list of Osama bin Laden's Top Ten Movies of the Year? If you're were not invited to William Kristol's most recent Pancake Breakfast/Circle Jerk then no, it's not something that would ever have occurred to you.

All of that was to provide context for this: Libertas and especially their main blogger, Dirty Harry, have to be way out in Stupidland even by their standards and Harry has achieved that with his reaction to Ben Stein's Expelled. Here's a money quote from his review of the movie:

Darwin, atheists, and the scientific community are stumped on one fairly important question: How did life begin? No one can answer it. No one’s come close. In Expelled we hear supposedly intelligent scientists rabidly opposed to ID posit fantastically unscientific theories like the howler about crystals creating life. We hear a lot from atheist Richard Dawkins who suggests we sprang from an alien race who seeded the Earth. But best of all, we’re guided through this journey of anti-intellectualism by Ben Stein who dryly cuts through the nonsense with a Jack Benny stare or common sense questions, like this one in response to the Dawkins’ alien idea: “Well, isn’t that a form of intelligent design?”

I've seen the clip of Ben Stein's interview with Richard Dawkins and it's obvious from the way it's chopped up that Stein edited in such a way that it takes Dawkins' hypothetical construct and uses it to make him look like his favorite book is Chariots of the Gods. Dawkins doesn't need me to defend him as he does an excellent job of that here. The point of this is to show how Dirty Harry wholeheartedly endorses Stein's tactic of embracing the evidence that seems to prove his point while ignoring the evidence that proves that his point is wrong. In another post he dismisses critics who hated the film as immature and claims that they did not judge the film on its merits but rather on their personal opinions. This from the guy who thinks Iron Man lives to serve the jihad.

Harry's lofty opinions of the film are seemingly undone by the box office gross of its opening weekend. Despite opening on over 1000 screens, a large advertising budget and the boasts of its producers that the box office take would be in the tens of millions, it premiered at #9 for the week, pulling in a meager 3 million dollars, most of that probably from church groups renting out theaters. This would seem to effectively end Dirty Harry's argument that the film is TeH Awesum and that the public is secretly hungering for movies aimed at the conservative audience. You WOULD think that unless you were a rightwing extremist who writes for a movie blog and possesses an unending ability to take a huge pile of shit and turn it into shit-ade.

Instead of quietly accepting the blow dealt to his worldview of a conservative ascendancy, he attempts to portray the whole thing as a victory by creating* a conflict between Ben Stein and Morgan Spurlock whose documentary Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden? also premiered this weekend. If you judge the movie by that measure and that measure only then yes, Expelled is a huge success. Of course, if you consider other factors like Expelled's greater exposure, big advertising budget and the fact that Spurlock had no church groups willing to march Borg-like into theaters to go see his movie then it looks somewhat less like a reason to shout "VICTORY" from the rooftops.

But hey, I'm sure you're thinking that Dirty Harry is consistent in his thinking that a gross of 3 million from 1000 screens is awesome and a cause for celebration. Well, if that's what you thought, you were wrong again. Last year, Michael Moore's health care documentary Sicko earned 3.7 million dollars in its second week of release while being shown on 702 screens. In other words, it made MORE money on FEWER screens in its SECOND week of release than Expelled did in its first week. (This was down from its first week take of around 7.5 million from 400 screens in its first week.) And who was it that took this information and declared Sicko to be a box office failure? Do I really have to say?

That’s pretty sad if Sicko can’t manage to muster Bowling For Columbine numbers, especially after Fahrenheit 9/11 made Moore a phenomenon. Why is it faltering? Well, I think liberals are finding the film frustrating to watch.

And so, there you have it: a proud member of the 9% of film critics who liked Expelled. I'm looking forward to Harry's next review where he describes his love for a movie that claims to prove that 2+2=5 and attacks all those immature, closed-minded critics who had the gall to disagree with him and say that the very idea is stupid and obviously untrue. Either that or he'll do a post warning the world that Speed Racer secretly advocates the rule of a world wide caliphate. Either way, we can all get a good laugh.

*I was going to jokingly say, "by intelligently designing," but there's no evidence of intelligence involved here.