The film you saw isn't nearly as good as the one they cut

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2004)

Sometimes watching the deleted scenes on the DVD of a movie leaves you hankering for the film that could have been and suddenly disappointed with the film you had thought you liked. Like the DVD for John Dahl's "Joyride"(2001), the DVD package for Tom Shadyac's "Bruce Almighty" reveals a whole other movie that was shot, but underperformed at the test screenings and got chopped down to a simplistic version of itself. Don't be confused, "Bruce" still amply earns it's 8 of 10 rating and that's an 8 tending toward 9 due to the reasonable attempt to discuss philosophical issues amid Jim Carrey's rubber faced mugging and fart jokes. The plot: "what would happen if you got to/had to be God?" is rife with possibilities and the finished film reels like a Marx Brothers telegraph of a Tolstoy novel. Pretty darn good, but Oh what could have been. Watch the deleted scenes and the "Method of Jim" reels on the extras portion of the DVD then pause to imagine the film that "Bruce Almighty" was before "Shady-hack" went to chopping. It's an editing job that trades divine for dividend.