Bill Maher: But I'm Not Wrong (2010)

Fresh and Exciting

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Yes you are! (<---All caps) laughing out loud (for some stupid reason the rules make me spell it out) and stupid too, it was hard to look past the blatantly obvious u-n-intelligence of the comedian After looking past that I laughed at one or two minor things the majority of his act was just plain bombing and it made me wonder how much he paid the live audience to laugh at all his stuff that wasn't funny. I also tried not to get annoyed by the stupid attacks on all the religions which to me has no place in comedy there just is not anything funny about slamming peoples believe systems no matter what you think of them. And to add to that he insults the very Country that gives him the freedom to do his comedy America and the great Republican System that it is build on, thank God we don't have Democratic System (mob rule straight quote from Thomas Jefferson) yet like this guy wants.For some reason they removed this review from Netflix, I had about 10 different people look it over and no one saw anything wrong with it.Really they don't allow you to put all caps where they belong, why is highlighting a certain set of words to express them better now considered shouting come on, not everyone on the internet is too stupid to use this right. You should at least allow them upon review approval.

I used to like Maher's stand-up, but this show is clear proof that he lost his edge. It's difficult to diagnose exactly what has changed --- on the face of it, it's still pretty much the same basic kind of material, poking much-deserved fun at the bigotry and absurdity of American public life.The wife says that he has gotten lazy, and there seems to be evidence of that: his jokes frequently lack punch and timing, and the flow of his monologue often seems contrived and unrehearsed.It is not only that, however. For me, the most tedious bits were those that clearly formed part of a dialog between Maher and whoever he perceives as addressing him --- the political right, a hostile part of his audience, Palin, the tea-baggers. Maher clearly sees himself as being engaged in a debate, he is involved in a discourse, he feels that he needs to make a point on behalf of whatever cause he has adopted as his own, and he visibly wants to convince his audience, instead of entertaining them. For a comedian to get away with that, he would need to be better informed, wiser, more detached, and a better orator than Maher is. Jon Stewart can pull it off on his better days, and of course Carlin could.Yet Maher is no Carlin. While that acerbic curmudgeon got better and tougher with age, Maher gets more preachy and involved. Perhaps he is a victim of is own success --- the publicity he achieved with the rants he published in various ways (stand-up, TV show, book, movie) caused him to take himself and his rants too seriously, and to see himself as a bona fide party in a debate when he should really be the clown that points out and accentuates the funny and crazy bits from the sideline. To be funny, he needs to rise above the fray, instead of involving himself in it. He is a pretty decent comedian (as evidenced in the better segments of this show), but he is a failure when it comes to lecturing on serious matters.As it turns out, the title of the show is an omen to what is fundamentally the problem with it: it is about Maher being right (or at least "not wrong") about whatever it is he cares to be right about, rather than simply being funny, which obviously is no longer enough for Maher. Watch "I'm Swiss" instead.

Many times during this show Bill Maher says "it's not a rally" as a sort of "quiet down" to the crowd who are responding to him hitting out at Republicans, Bush, Palin or some other topic that serves to excite his fans. Whether he is right or not is up for debate but certainly he is helped by a friendly crowd because, as he observes, all he has to do is crack an old Sarah Palin joke and they roar for a good minute. I say he is helped because for a good chunk of this show there is material that those same people will have seen on Real Time, so their laughter helps him carry over the familiarity of the material and perhaps, like Real Time, a friendly crowd helps the viewer at home get into it a bit more.Personally I stopped watching Real Time on the last season break because I just found that 9 times out of 10 it was far from the discussion programme that I found it to be when I started watching it. However Bill Maher does work better on a stage where he doesn't have to pretend to listen to people and can just dominate, like he does on Real Time, but at least here it doesn't hurt the show but is rather the whole deal. He is on good form here even though he is very much putting out the same material that he has on other places. I did laugh several times though and he did have some killer lines that showed edge and imagination – the best by a million miles being his comment on the topic of Obama being popular that Republicans can also fill a stadium (I'll not ruin the gag by typing it here).These laughs are necessary because otherwise he does rather hammer the same old points in a way that is amusing but not particularly funny. The reason for this is that he is just forcing his rather simple opinion down the throats of those who already agree with them. It is a shame that he does this because he is a funny guy with a good presence on the stage but his material is lacking at times and his friendly crowd is very necessary. Fans of his will love it while causal viewers such as myself will find some strong laughs amongst the "so-so" ones. Not a great show but a solid one – and to be honest, Maher is at his best when he doesn't have to allow anyone else to get a word in.

I agree with plenty of Bill Maher's viewpoints, but detest the self-righteous way in which he delivers his message. In this HBO special, he affirms his moral superiority to many of his fellow Americans, and does not apologize for calling many of them "stupid" simply for voting for George W. Bush. Even though this special was made more than a year after Barack Obama's inauguration, Maher still has a bone to pick with "Dubya", though George Walker Bush is by no means his only target. Ever since her debut on the world stage about a year-and-a-half prior to this Bill Maher special's airing, John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin has been a polarizing figure, both a conservative darling and a liberal punching bag: guess which view of Palin Bill Maher takes with a vengeance? His criticism of Palin is so obvious and repetitive that it gets boring.On the other extreme, Maher does bend over backwards to warn those he may potentially offend, especially on the topic of his criticism of organized religion. I must give him some kudos for giving those easily offended a heads-up about his criticism of religion, though it was no more harsh than his criticism of conservatism. I did find his personification of the Holy Trinity funny; in fact, even though it is potentially offensive to religious people, it was the funniest part of his entire monologue. Maher also goes over his way to defending Barack Obama more than half a year after being inexplicably rebuked by some in the media for his mild chiding of the current president's kid-gloves approach to politics; not that he has abandoned his criticism of Obama entirely, but he also moves in the other extreme of praising Obama. To top it off, Maher makes what seem like rater childish remarks by branding conservatives as racists.There are some high points: I liked that Maher actually did not condemn Eliot Spitzer and Tiger Woods for their adultery, which in this case is a huge exception to his self-righteous tone, and actually condoned male sexual behavior, albeit in a simplistic way, which I understand is necessary for a comedy special (as opposed a serious sexology class at Harvard).I have never seen Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity on TV, so I do not know why liberals find them unlikable, but I have heard some say that they find both men's self-righteous tone turns them off; it might be fair to say that Bill Maher is a mirror image of those conservative pundits. I know that the title for Bill Maher's is supposed to be cheeky and ironic, but one would not be wrong to take it as a literal statement, based on what one sees in this special. Luckily, Maher does show some humility, and I will continue to watch his hilarious "New Rules" segments on his "Real Time" show, which are invariably the best part of that weekly series.Maher was funnier when he was romping around with Shannon Tweed in the jungles of the UC Riverside Botantic Gardens. Even liberals may balk at the attitude of his latest HBO special. Still, I recommend people watch it and make up their own minds.