God Almighty!

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2003)

`Bruce Almighty' is yet another `high concept' comedy starring Jim Carrey, this time as a self-pitying, put-upon TV news reporter in Buffalo who finds himself endowed with all God's powers when the Almighty Himself decides to take a little vacation.
This material may seem tailor-made for Mr. Carrey's manic talents, but the makers of the film  screenwriters Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe and Steve Oedekerk, and director Tom Shadyac  have failed to discover any really innovative ways of approaching it. When Bruce learns that he has the power to alter the world's reality at will, he spends most of his time playing foolish little parlor tricks on people who irritate him. Carrey can still be wildly funny when the script calls for him to do that rubber-faced-and-bodied slapstick routine for which he is justly famous, but `Bruce Almighty' is not content to be a cynical, outrageous farce. It also wants to be a `meaningful' love-thy-neighbor comedy, and falls down miserably in the process. Morgan Freeman as God gets to do little but deliver high-toned, sappy homilies designed to make Bruce see the importance of the power that's been entrusted to him. True to the formula  one that goes at least as far back as Frank Capra films in the 1930's  the film turns hopelessly mawkish and sentimental in its final third. That would be forgivable had `Bruce Almighty' at least given us some cutting-edge outrageousness in its early stretches.
Jennifer Aniston exudes the requisite amount of charm as Bruce's devoted girlfriend, but the role is hardly one to challenge this obviously gifted young actress (see last year's `The Good Girl'). And there are a few moments when the filmmakers seem to have latched onto a clever or creative concept. But those moments are quick to pass and, before we know it, we are once again mired in the predictability of yet another manufactured, by-the-numbers Hollywood product. An additional problem with the movie is that it often defies the essential credibility that even an absurdist scenario such as this one demands. At least twice in the film, for instance, a flipped out, ranting reporter is allowed to stay on the air long after any halfway competent news show producer would have pulled the proverbial plug on him.
If it weren't for the presence of the gifted Carrey, `Bruce Almighty' would seem like just another `Bewitched' episode expanded out to feature length. Come to think of it, it feels that way anyhow.