Review: What’s the Matter With Kansas — the movie

The best news in director Joe Winston‘s What’s the Matter With Kansas is that there’s a place called the Creation Museum — and it’s in Kentucky, not Kansas. Judging by the footage in this documentary companion to the Thomas Frank book of the same name, the Bluegrass State’s monument to Adam and Eve literalism is one of the nation’s most terrifying places. When a stentorian male voice booms from unseen speakers that 90 percent of Americans own Bibles but only 38 percent believe that every word in the Bible is true, the place seems designed especially to frighten Christians.

“We know why suffering happens, don’t we?” a mother leads her nervous-looking young son as they walk through the museum. “Because of sin.” She goes on: “And we know that there’s hope. And who’s our hope?”

It’s not Barack Obama, that’s for sure.

Tonight at 7, the film kicks off a weeklong run at Liberty Hall (644 Massachusetts in Lawrence, 785-749-1972). This evening’s premiere includes Donn Teske, president of the Kansas Farmers Union and a strong presence in the movie. That screening, for which tickets cost $10 ($8 for students), benefits the Kansas Democratic Party.

More of the review after the jump.