Bill Maher: The Decider

Review By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

Most comedians, by and large, use their gifts for humor mainly on everyday situations either they themselves and others around them. Then, there’s Bill Maher.

Like his more conservative counterpart, Dennis Miller, he uses politics and current events, albeit with a more liberal slant, not only to make people laugh, but to point out at some of the sheer absurdities facing our society and our world at large today, particularly at our President, George W. Bush. While Bush has been only his easiest target during his scathing political commentary as host of the HBO political debate program Real Time, Maher saves his biggest barbs at the president for last, who is the primary focus of his new HBO stand-up TV special Bill Maher: The Decider, now available on DVD.

Filmed in Boston, the comedian takes jabs at everything political from Hurricane Katrina to Middle East foreign policy to lobbyists and corporate cronyism to, of course, Mr. Bush himself. He also uses his platform to take on many social issues as well, including sexual predators, sexuality, creationism-vs.-evolution, and of course, his personal favorite, religion and its many absurdities.

While Maher’s style is often rather abrasive and his political focus not for everyone, there is little to not find funny in this stand-up performance. This is said because the comedian and Real Time host’s real gift is not so much his incredibly sharp knowledge of politics, current events, and social issues, but how his abrasive and seemingly no-nonsense way of delivering his points are hilarious in themselves.

His confident manner and his way of pointing his many issues, particularly Bush’s now-infamous foibles, as so blatantly ridiculous enables him to explain the absurdity of things in such an incredibly clever way. Some examples include when he remarks about how creationism is likened to The Flintstones or comparing the selling of ports to an Arab country in the middle of a “war on terror” in the Middle East to how the Red Cross< would sell a blood bank to Dracula.

The DVD is presented in the 1:78:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of the original high-definition TV broadcasts. The DVD has only one single solitary special feature, which is a brief encore from the performance in which Maher reads from two chapters of pastor, Rick Warren’s, The Purpose Driven Life. While having that as your sole extra is disappointing, it’s very funny as he manages to turn a religious self-help book into a oddly disturbing double entendre.

All in all, while Bill Maher: The Decider finds the comedian more political, more abrasive, and more scathing of the Bush administration than he’s ever been, it’s also incredibly funny because of his gift for pointing out the absurd and ridiculous in such a confident and brazen manner. While the short running time and lack of extras is a bit disappointing on this DVD, even people who may not like political (or even liberal political) humor can’t deny that Maher still ranks among one ...