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Avg. Critic Score: 62 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
16 Iffy for 16+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 91
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    It's not every day you get to see a movie that begins in satire and ends in reverence, but then, for Kevin Smith, they may ultimately be the same thing. Read full review

  • 90
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    The first commandment of Dogma: Thou shalt not stop laughing. Read full review

  • 88
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    If the film is less than perfect, it is because Smith is too much in love with his dialogue. Smith is a gifted comic writer who loves paradox, rhetoric and unexpected zingers from the blind side. Read full review

  • 75
    Boston Globe | Jay Carr

    Has that rarest of qualities in movies that think of themselves as religious. I'm talking about the vision thing. And the ability to make morality entertaining. Read full review

  • 75
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    Mature, thoughtful and occasionally dazzling. Read full review

  • 70
    Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

    A raucous, profane but surprisingly endearing piece of work. Read full review

  • 70
    The New York Times | Elvis Mitchell

    Smith makes a big, gutsy leap into questions of faith and religion. He miraculously emerges with his humor intact and his wings unsinged. Read full review

  • 63
    USA Today | Susan Wloszczyna

    There is a keen intellect behind this devoutly defiant fable. Read full review

  • 40
    Washington Post | Rita Kempley

    For a while, the film is screamingly funny, but the further it goes, the more muddled the narrative becomes. Read full review

  • 40
    Variety | Todd McCarthy

    A very vulgar pro-faith comedy rather than a sacrilegious goof, Dogma is an extraordinarily uneven film. Read full review

View more reviews for Dogma on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 16+ Controversial comedy is irreverent and bloody.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that although this is a Kevin Smith comedy, it's controversial for its religious theme and elements. Although the Catholic League condemned the film, Smith maintains its message regarding the Christian faith is actually positive. Like most of Smith's comedies, this movie contains explicit conversations about sex, marijuana use, and a lot of strong language (they love the "f" word especially and you'll notice that quite a bit of dialogue is dubbed over when this plays on Comedy Central). There are also several violent scenes involving two renegade angels and a few demons, but the blood is over-the-top and almost cartoonish in nature.
  • Families can talk about whether Kevin Smith went too far by lampooning Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular. Is there a redeeming message about faith at the end or is it just offensive from start to finish? Do you think this fantasy comedy merited all of the controversy it stirred up or not?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: Strong female characters -- God is a "she," and so is the film's heroine. A woman with a crisis of faith learns to believe again and to accept a mission from God.
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: Heads explode, characters get their necks broken, stabbed, thrown to the ground from high altitude, beat up, and held at gun/knife-point. However, the most violent scenes seem over-the-top and cartoonish for "comedic" effect.
  • sex false3 Sex: Jay keeps crudely propositioning Bethany with sex and explicitly discusses sex; an adulterous couple makes out on a bus; Bethany gives Jay a brief kiss; Muse is shown dancing in bra and panties at a strip club. An angel says sex (and how people look during it) is considered a joke in heaven.
  • language false5 Language: There's not a scene without an F-word or worse, if not more like three. Other frequently spoken obscenities include: "bitch," "s--t," "assh--e," "bulls--t," and many euphemisms for genitals and sex.
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false5 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Bethany gets drunk; Stoners Jay and Silent Bob smoke marijuana in a few scenes; An angel drinks after turning into a human as do customers at a strip club. The cardinal smokes a cigarette.
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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