MOVIE
Dogma (2025 release)
Director Kevin Smith
Review Ray Chan
It's hard to believe that Dogma just turned 25. Still relevant today as when it was accused of heresy back in 1999, it's a brilliant exposition of what happens when Christian theology skips Sunday service, grabs a beer,
and starts asking uncomfortable questions with a grin.
On the surface, it’s a road-trip comedy littered with
angels, demons, prophets, and profanity. But beneath the irreverence, it’s a
surprisingly thoughtful meditation on belief — less interested in what
you believe than how tightly you cling to it. The film gleefully pokes
holes in rigid doctrine, suggesting that faith, when stripped of curiosity,
becomes less divine truth and more bureaucratic loophole.
Director Kevin Smith knew what hot water he’d be getting
into with this deliberate introspection of a religion he clearly has no time
for: so much so that he felt compelled to insert an apologetic note to viewers at
the start and end of the movie.
The central premise — a pair of fallen angels exploiting a
technicality to re-enter Heaven — works as a sly metaphor for institutional
religion itself. Rules, the film argues, can become so convoluted that they
undermine the very principles they’re meant to uphold. It’s a study of
scripture as fine print, salvation as a contractual oversight. Divine grace is
reduced to something you might accidentally redeem, like a supermarket coupon.
There's a cast stacked with stars: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, Alan Rickman, Alanis Morissette, George Carlin. And Smith himself.
But what makes Dogma stand out and land its punches is its satire, which is
sharp but rarely cruel. It doesn’t attack spirituality so much as it skewers
the human tendency to systematise it into something rigid, exclusionary, and
oddly corporate. The Church, in this universe, feels less like a sacred space
and more like a brand in need of a re-launch, complete with marketing campaigns
and focus-group-friendly iconography.
There are some scenes already rendered iconic in pop
culture:
Buddy Christ: Cardinal Glick introduces a rebranded
Jesus who winks and gives a thumbs-up. This satirises the Church's attempts to
market itself to contemporary youth through a more palatable yet hollow image.
Ideas vs. Beliefs: Rufus, the 13th Apostle,
argues that ideas are superior to beliefs because beliefs are rigid and lead to
conflict, whereas ideas can grow and change.
The Glass of Water: Faith is compared to a glass
of water that is easy to fill when you are young. As one grows, the vessel
becomes larger, and the same amount of water (faith) no longer fills it,
necessitating a refill through new spiritual experiences.
The Golgathan (Shit Demon): This monster,
comprised of the excrement of those executed at Calvary, serves as a literal
and metaphorical representation of human sin and the waste produced by the
darker side of religious history.
And yet, for all its irreverence, the film isn’t cynical.
There’s an underlying warmth to its chaos, a suggestion that belief is messy
because people are messy.
The characters stumble, argue, and swear their way through
existential crises, but they’re all searching for something genuine. Even the
divine figures are flawed, implying that perfection might be less important
than intention.
In that sense, Dogma is less a takedown of religion than a
plea for humility within it. It asks: what if faith wasn’t about certainty, but
about openness? What if questioning wasn’t sacrilegious, but devotion?
Of course, it delivers all this wrapped in crude jokes and
absurd set pieces, as if to say: if you’re going to wrestle with the meaning of
existence, you might as well laugh while doing it.
