With God incapacitated, the demon Azrael (Jason Lee) makes his move, convincing disgraced Angel of Death Loki (Matt Damon) and his fellow outcast from the heavenly host, Bartleby (Ben Affleck), to take advantage of a popularity craving priest’s decree that anyone who passes through the gates of his parish will receive immediate forgiveness. If the duo passes through the gates and then immediately dies, they’ll go straight to Heaven, the very place that God declared they could never again enter.
Our only hope comes in Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), an apostate Catholic who now works at an abortion clinic. She also happens to be the last scion of Jesus Christ. Following the instructions of the Metron (Alan Rickman), the voice of God, Bethany—along with the unknown 13th Apostle Rufus (Chris Rock) and mainstays Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith)—tries to prevent Loki and Bartleby from undoing Creation.
That’s a lot of plot, even in the simplified form above. And, by his own admission, Smith’s strengths lie in shooting dialogue, not action. Dogma has a lot of the sex-soaked dialogue that made Clerks, Mallrats, and Chasing Amy so quotable. Yes, Jay shouts “snoochie boochies,” but we also get Rickman sneering, “You humans. If there isn’t a movie about it, it’s not worth knowing, is it?,” or young Damon, with all his “aw schucks” charm, giggling while Loki admits, “I just like to fuck with the clergy, man.”
Expected as these moments might be, Dogma also includes plenty of straightforward dialogue about the nature of religion. The narrative stops from time to time so that Rufus or Serendipity the Muse (Salma Hayek) can rant about how organized religion made Christianity racist and sexist. On one hand, these declarations can get preachy, especially since Rock, Hayek, and Fiorentino struggle to deliver the more earnest dialogue. Fiorentino in particular suffers in part because she plays Bethany as a parody of Gen X cynicism, accentuating every line reading with a smirk, an eye roll, and (not or) a flutter of eye-lids. The actors seem to know that they’re browbeating the audience and can’t figure out how to make the lines into words their people would actually say.
That said, the clunkiness of these moments only underscore their sincerity. Amidst all the one-liners against various sex acts, the impulse to urge believers to use their faith as a way to accept and affirm others reads as sweet, if artless. One senses that Smith considers these declarations so important that he doesn’t even care that he’s undercutting his favorite part of his work by letting the banter suffer in order to get across the message.
Deadly Duo
While Rock, Hayek, and Fiorentino sometimes fail to make the material work, the rest of the cast shines. Jason Lee doesn’t have any of the menace that he’ll bring to supervillain Syndrome in The Incredibles five years later, but his flat sarcastic deliveries work for a scheming demon in a comedy. The always game Rickman never condescends to the material, and even if he does, he’s playing a condescending angel, so it only enhances the sneering. And the irony of casting George Carlin as a Catholic cardinal does most of the heavy lifting, making his fun line readings icing on the cake.