Review: Bruce Almighty
After starring in pointless drama roles trying to bridge his career with pointless movies like Man on the Moon and The Majestic, Jim Carrey is back in his top form with Bruce Almighty a funny, yet forgettable film that has Carrey inheriting the powers of God because he believes he can do the job better.
Carrey is Bruce Nolan a TV news reporter who is just having a bad time in life at the moment, forget the fact that Jennifer Aniston is his girlfriend. After being passed up for an anchor position by a slimy, sleazy co-worker Bruce has a meltdown on the air that proves to be one of the films most memorable scenes. Bruce then makes a plea to God on why he is being treated so badly for helping people out, stemming from a homeless man he tried to save from being hassled and got the crap kicked out of him. He makes a mention that he could do the job better so the big guy (Morgan Freeman) grants him his powers until the 7th at 7:00PM to help as many people as possible.
The movie, directed by Tom Shadyac, focuses on God as a general being rather than any denomination’s overseer, therefore pleasing any number of churches who don’t like to be made fun of. For those who see the movie as sacrilegious, they obviously need to take the holy rod out of their holy butt.
Bruce Almighty uses sight gags and a few regular jokes, which seem to cater to the least common denominator when it comes to dogs peeing on furniture or Bruce blowing wind up a girl’s skirt. Yet, you can’t help but be charmed by the very screen presence of Carrey whom we have missed since his days saving animals in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and making the court room funny in Liar, Liar.
The movie does get a bit preachy toward the end where the comedy rollercoaster comes to an almost horizontal flow. As with all funny movies released in recent time (with the exception of a choice few) once you have the audiences attention in the first 30 minutes you slowly wind down the laughs and bring up the drama. While this is to be expected the general tone of this last half-hour is one of the screenwriter and director preaching to the audience about the good inside. If I wanted to see a televangelist spew crap, I could do it for free at home.
Still you have a hard time not liking what Carrey can do on the big screen and many, many people have been looking forward to his return in a normal form (sans the makeup of The Grinch). Bruce Almighty suffers from a few problems but none of them are debilitating toward the likeability of the actors and story. If you can sit through some strange person telling you the way you live your life is wrong, and you want to laugh you butt off through the first half take in Bruce Almighty. If you are easily offended by God wearing a Yankees hat, or the very existence of the fellow in a movie then you need to get a firm grasp on reality and loose-up, possibly by seeing Bruce Almighty.
