A religious epic by the director of Clerks? You know you're not gonna get The Greatest Story Ever Told, at least not with Alanis Morissette as God Herself.

Kevin Smith's Dogma has already raised the ire of Catholic groups in the U.S., who pressured Miramax and its parent company Disney into dropping the film (it was then picked up by Lions Gate). But as a practising Catholic, the New Jersey filmmaker is unhappy at being perceived as anti-religious. The script -- written around the same time as Clerks in the early '90s, but postponed until he had the means to take on such a big production -- grew out of a period of spiritual self-examination, and he's sincere about the questions he's asking about faith. The controversial thing is that these questions are asked in a movie packed with Marvel Comics-style violence, lewd jokes and villains that include a trio of hockey-stick-wielding teenage demons and a monster made of shit.

Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) is a cynical abortion clinic worker who discovers that she's a distant relative of Jesus Christ. With that responsibility comes a quest: to stop Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck) -- two angels on the losing side of the last war in heaven, now exiled to Wisconsin -- from using a new loophole in Catholic dogma to re-enter the Pearly Gates. Such an event would prove God fallible, thereby ending all existence. For company, Bethany gets Rufus (Chris Rock), the black apostle who was written out of the Bible, Serendipity (Salma Hayek), a heavenly muse turned stripper, and some unlikely prophets in the form of Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Smith).

Dogma is often excessively coarse, uneven in the pacing (a lengthy train-ride sequence is entirely superfluous) but also great fun. And it's not half as dumb as it looks -- by pitching God in a way that might be attractive to a young, modern audience, Dogma functions something like Catholicism Wow!, the campaign cooked up by the movie's Cardinal Glick (George Carlin).

"There's a bit of self-mockery there," says Smith at an interview during this year's Toronto International Film Festival. "Cardinal Glick isn't really held up for ridicule. He's a very sincere salesman who believes in what's he's doing, but he's selling something and he knows it. There were shades of me in Glick because that's exactly what I was doing with Dogma -- I believe in it, but I am absolutely selling something.

"And what I'm selling is, one, a movie, and two, a newer approach or just a thought in another direction of something that we've come to know as stagnant or boring or useless in our lives. There should be more alternate takes on the whole subject. Catholicism shouldn't be like a fucking country club; you shouldn't have to follow a set of rules or else you don't belong. It should be more malleable than that."

For Smith, Dogma is about pitching "heaven and hell to people who just aren't interested any more." It's for people who were dragged to church as kids but "when confronted by the real world," found it too hard to believe what they were taught. Nor are the versions of God and faith usually on display in our culture too attractive, either. "You click on the TV and see the televangelists," says Smith, "and it's like, 'Heaven's yours if you send a bunch of cash.' Or there's the fire-and-brimstone types with the billboards or the people killing abortion doctors. People think, 'Oh, that's religion, and that's why I'm not involved any more.'

"It's a sad thing, and it's done man no service in his relationship with God. We so often get caught up with the intermediaries, the people who represent themselves as God's emissaries on earth. The movie is not about, 'Hey, man, get back to church.' But it's a movie that says, when you get past everything, this is really what we have. Everything is so temporary here and you're allotted a very short amount of time and, if you believe in that sort of thing, beyond that there's something else and that's chiefly why we're here in the first place."

In conversation, Smith is more thoughtful on the subject of modern Christianity than one might initially gather from Dogma, which makes observations both acute and idiotic. But the key idea that shines through the movie's chaos is that religion should be a matter of joy, not guilt, and that salvation is a gift, not something you could ever suffer enough to earn.

"Catholicism is so much about 'We're not worthy,' that you have to become worthy," says Smith. "When I first started meeting born-again people, I really liked the notion they had of 'Catholic arrogance.' They felt that Catholics believe that you have to work for heaven, and they don't believe that. They tell you, 'We put all our faith and trust in Christ, Christ is our saviour and Christ will save us. It's arrogant to believe you can work for something as good as heaven.' "

What most Christians will make of Smith's shit monster is anyone's guess, but I for one hope they take it in the right spirit.