God awful

Rating: 2/10 (16 January 2005)

Local-TV man Carrey thinks he's treated badly by everyone, and lashes out against his co-workers, girlfriend, and God. He just can's accept the fact that he's an absolute bastard living a pretty nice life. Enter God, who teaches him a lesson about life by letting Bruce (Carrey) temp for him while he's off on vacation. Hilarity ensues.
Bruce Almighty is essentially a mix of previous Carrey films Liar, Liar and The Mask. If you've seen those two, you can pretty much guess what's coming. Most of the time, Almighty is a horribly bad film. Carrey's manic tantrums and crazy antics were never that funny to begin with, and by now it's been done to death.
The film is divided up into three parts: An introduction where we get to know (and hate) Bruce, a middle part where Bruce has fun with his powers, and a third part, where Bruce learns the errors of his ways and becomes a better person. The beginning is bad, the middle has some fun bits, and the end is half an hour of excruciating torture.
Instead of entertaining, the film raises some questions. Does anybody want to see this kind of sappy endings, where the protagonist gets a moral education in order to become a better human being? What made Aniston's character Grace (see what they did with her name there?) fall in love with Bruce in the first place? Why are the effects so cheap looking? How much money did Morgan Freeman get to sign on for this mess? It's doubtful that this film would have been made if Carrey hadn't starred in it. It's just not funny. On an ending note, and for future reference - any screenplay that includes such "hilarious" catch phrases as "B-E-A-utiful" or "Good, gooood" should be burned. [2/10]