Smith's 125-minute film is often ironic, sometimes contrived and silly, but rarely as controversial or immoral as advance word suggested. Granted, Smith's route to said enlightenment is unorthodox. The primary traveler here is a reconception of that exalted pilgrim Dorothy Gale, accompanied by oddballs even more extreme than Dorothy's Oz-bound crew. Since God by definition cannot make mistakes, his flawed creation would have to be unmade. Smith's characters are ungainly and often entertaining amalgamations of adolescent or barely post-adolescent tics and interests, which is to say, they don't cohere so much as they wander through a series of alternately odd and mundane situations.
Dogma offers more of the same, on a larger scale.
But really, it's pro-religious, wanting to reinvigorate faith with joy and hope. If we could understand Alanis' thunderous caterwaul, that's probably close to what she's saying too. All rights reserved.