From the LA Times' Mark Olson:
Someday, perhaps, it will be possible to look back on "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" as a relic and reminder of the rhetorical logic employed during the era of George W. Bush. Until then, it should be seen simply as a tiresome ideological bludgeon, an attempt to deceive audiences into believing it is one thing when it is, in fact, quite another.
Entertainer, pitchman and political commentator Ben Stein begins the film by intoning that there is a growing conspiracy within the academic and scientific communities blocking out proponents of "intelligent design" as a means to explain the origins of life and human development in favor of lock step enforcement of Darwinist theories of evolution.
By setting the argument up in this way, one which is never fully pursued or proven, Stein has, of course, attempted to utilize a textbook Karl Rove-ian tactic to "reframe" the discussion, putting it in terms by which his side seems the valiant underdog, suppressed and belittled by its opponent, while turning notions of right and wrong, freedom of speech and even the meaning of science upside down.
More, much more from Scientific American, who, not surprisingly, were not amused by the film. But this is one of the more intelligent collections of responses you'll find.
In the new science-bashing movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein and the rest of the filmmakers sincerely and seriously argue that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution paved the way for the Holocaust. By "seriously," I mean that Ben Stein acts grief-stricken and the director juxtaposes quotes from evolutionary biologists with archival newsreel clips from Hitler's Reich. Prepare for an intellectual night at the cinema.
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