No karma can run over this 'Dogma'

COURTESY LIONS GATE Jesus' ultra-great granddaughter fends the feces demon off.

With all the religious controversy surrounding Dogma, it might be best if I didn't begin this article with "God bless Kevin Smith." But, if I've learned anything from his new film, it's that impiety...is funny. Hence: "God bless Kevin Smith."

Clever and hilarious, Dogma—Smith's fourth film—is a model exam-ple of a Sunday School lesson on faith—only injected with dick and fart jokes. Loki and Bartlby (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), two renegade angels ousted from heaven by God, detect a loophole in Catholic law that would allow them to re-enter heaven through the gates of a New Jersey church. But their entrance, a rejection of God's decree, would consequently destroy human existence. It's up to Rufus, the little-known 13th apostle (Chris Rock), stoner-mallrats Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith himself), and the last living descendent of Jesus Christ (Linda Fiorentino)—who works at an abortion clinic—to travel to the Garden State and save the world.

The film, which includes genocidal angels, pro-lifer jokes and a giant shit-demon, infuriated the Catholic League, which protested so vehemently that Disney (which owns Miramax) refused to release it, selling it instead to independent Lions Gate Films.

Silly Catholics. Would anyone take a version of The Ten Commandments seriously if Jerry Seinfeld were cast as Moses? ("Hey, what's the deal with unleavened bread?") Of course they wouldn't. So when Smith cast Rock as an apostle, Alanis Morissette as the Almighty Herself, and George Carlin as a Catholic Cardinal—Carlin, the same guy who once had a stand-up bit entitled "Rape is Funny"—we know that Dogma is not to be taken too seriously.

The story line is nothing short of brilliant, an ingenious exercise in devout instruction disguised as a Silent Bob and Jay action-adventure comedy. Throughout the movie, we learn that Jay masturbates more than any man on the planet, that the platypus is proof of God's sense of humor, and that "J.C." (Jesus) was actually black.

But Smith never loses sight of his greater purpose. With Dogma, the writer-director-producer plays host to an almost This Is Your Life tribute to Catholicism, a result of his 15 years of Catholic school education. To Smith fans, this should come as no surprise, for Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy all contain glimpses of Smith's affinity for chicks in plaid skirts and knee-highs. In Chasing Amy, Banky (Jason Lee, Dogma's Azrael—a muse sent to hell) laments not having went with more Catholic school girls when he was a kid. "As it stands," he says, "I have no `and then she unzipped her jumper' stories."

It's this steady admiration for the sentiments of Catholicism (beliefs or otherwise) that drives Smith and hence Dogma. It is no more a blasphemous attack of Catholicism than Mel Brooks' "Inquisition" number in History of the World: Part I was a denunciation of Judaism. Instead, it is an affectionate tribute to the Catholic faith, a film that allows Smith to marvel at his upbringing—and to mock it at the same time.

Nonetheless, there's still plenty of sex, weed and "shnoogans" to go around, and Smith succeeds insofar as he can combine his traditional stoner elements with a serious reflection on religion—and not come off as preachy or sermonic. When Bartlby expresses his frustration with modern faith, that's Smith talking. Of course, when Jay prays for hot chicks with big titties to fall from the sky, well, that's Smith talking too.

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