Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)

O Masterpiece
X Excellent
O Good
O OK
O Mediocrity
O Avoid

Review by Jason Pyles / June 17, 2008

In “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” there’s a quiet scene where Ben Stein stands face to face, confronting a statue of Charles Darwin. This brief moment is a metaphor for the whole film, which is a documentary where Stein investigates the scientific community’s attitudes toward Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Many people only know Ben Stein as the monotone, roll-calling economics teacher from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986). But he was also once Richard Nixon’s speechwriter and a pundit, of sorts. In “Expelled,” Stein travels the globe with his unexcitable — almost sleepy demeanor, wearing a suit and tennis shoes. His interviewing style is remarkable: His lines of questioning are driving but never threatening, so his subjects feel compelled to answer, but they do not become combative.

And naturally, as documentaries tend to be, “Expelled” is clearly slanted. Indeed, Ben Stein is a “believer,” meaning, in God, the Creator. Consequently, the Darwinists of the scientific community are, perhaps unfairly, vilified. All too often, Hollywood movies portray religious people as manic zealots, obsessed and potentially dangerous. But “Expelled” does the opposite: This film’s editing includes highly spirited, sometimes irrational overreactions from the evolutionist types, while those who consider the question of Intelligent Design are portrayed as reasonable, calm and collected.

“Expelled” is sometimes troubling, other times sad. Stein draws parallels between Darwinism and Nazism, and he digs up what he calls “the darkest chapter of American medicine,” the implementation of eugenics, where 50,000 people were sterilized or prevented marriage, all in the name of “helping evolution along,” because they were “feeble-minded.” Stein goes so far as to claim that Planned Parenthood is a form of eugenics that still exists today.

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is one of the best films of 2008, an overlooked, underrated gem that will particularly be enjoyed by “the believers,” but probably not as much by the nonbelievers. Stein uses a metaphor that employs the Berlin Wall, and it’s brilliant.

In the beginning of the movie, there are interspersed clips of silliness, animations and old film footage that are included to spice up the material, add humor and to mock Stein’s antagonists. These childish insertions are unnecessary and detract from the film’s power.

But if you see “Expelled” for no other reason, watch it so you can catch a climactic showdown between Ben Stein and Richard Dawkins, a vehement nonbeliever who is described by another colleague in the movie as “a very smart guy but a little bit of a reptile.” It seems an unfair classification, but if Darwinism is accurate, perhaps there could be some truth to it.

Directed by Nathan Frankowski
Ben Stein / Steven Meyer / Richard Dawkins
Documentary 90 min.
MPAA: PG (for thematic material, some disturbing images and brief smoking)

U.S. Release Date: April 18, 2008
Copyright 2008: 282