This documentary raises some interesting questions about the fallibility of evolutionary theory, but it does so in such a smug, disingenuous and self-serving manner that it’s hard to take it seriously. At its best, Expelled doesn’t pretend to offer an alternative answer to the origin of life as much as it argues that the scientific community may not actually have the right answer just yet. Unfortunately, host and cowriter Ben Stein reaches for more, muddying the issue by bringing up atheism and – in a particularly galling stretch – equating Darwinism with Nazism. A more focused, less pandering documentary would have come across as far more intelligent.
