The guts of this movie were ripped out - see how in the "Deleted Scenes"

Rating: 4/10 (2 February 2004)

Obviously we've seen this kind of movie before - the hook here is Jim Carrey and how his manic persona handles the responsibility of infinite power. Unfortunately the one bit of true Carrey-fication is the one you've all seen in the trailers where he mimes "I've Got The Power" and sets off the fire hydrant.
This film resolutely steers away from exploring even the tiniest potential in the ordinary Joe who is given the powers of God. I was shocked when I realised that the entire movie was going to more or less be about Bruce and his relationship with girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston).
The structure and story arc made no sense; the first thing Bruce does with his Godlike powers is engineer a night of superb lovemaking, but there was no hint that this was a problem between him and Grace. When Grace and her sister start talking about how "tonight's the night" that Bruce will propose, you wonder if Bruce is actually in the same movie, since a reluctance or otherwise to commit to Grace was completely absent from his characterisation. When their date turns out to be the most romantic dinner in the world, you the viewer know that it is in the way of these things that he isn't going to propose, but you are left mystified as to why, and when it transpires that it is all just to announce that he got the Anchor job you are left feeling that Carrey has suddenly turned Bruce into a completely different character. Later on in the movie Grace rounds on him and sarcastically yells that what she wants is a "Boat, and sacks of cash". This is puzzling because he had not manifested any particular materialistic tendencies around Grace - we didn't even know if she had seen the flash new sports car he was driving. And why was the only apparent consequence to answering everybody's prayers in the affirmative being everybody winning the lottery, ending up with $17 each? Surely a high school kid would have written a few more scenarios into a script about an omnipotent guy?
However upon viewing the Extras on the DVD, we discover that a lot of this important stuff was contained within scenes which were deleted before release. The restaurant scene actually ended with Grace berating Bruce and pointing out that she had been waiting for a proposal; subsequently there was a scene in which he took her to a mansion he had created for them, in the car he was now showing off - setting up Grace's sarcasm later on. It has to be said that the mansion scene in particular was poorly thought through and unconvincing - he just got a promotion at work and now he can afford a multimillionaire mansion? And she "buys" it? On the other hand, there should have been *something* in its place. All those prayer consequences had been shot, but were cut "for pacing" (although it may have been to eliminate a plot hole - God shows him the bad consequence of one decision which is actually down to God's foreknowledge of what would have happened if Bruce Almighty hadn't intervened; but if Bruce has *all* God's powers, then presumably he would already know this?) The director's commentary on the deleted scenes reveals director Tom Shadyac to be two things: talentless and spineless. If he wasn't cutting essential plot scenes for pacing, he was doing so because "Jim was coming across too dark, and preview audiences didn't like it", or "We were worried that people might get offended." For heaven's sake, Tom, any director worth his salt would at least *pretend* that these changes were forced on him by the studio, instead of on his own initiative having gone out of his way to make his own movie suckier. One consequence of this cutting was to dramatically weaken Grace as a character, leaving Jennifer Aniston completely wasted.
Morgan Freeman as usual is just money in the bank. There is nobody you'd rather have play God, but it is a shame to see it happen in this movie.
Carrey does his manic facial act with no context other than that it's Jim Carrey so you expect it of him. In the outtakes his crazy mugging has the whole crew in stitches, and you can't help feel that they must be laughing because he's the star. That consummate professional Jennifer Aniston scarcely cracks a smile during these events, I notice, particularly when Carrey practically molests her while making his silly face. And Carrey can't do schmaltzy redemption, upon which at least a third of the movie relies, to save his life.
One final point - every visual aspect of this film screams Los Angeles and Southern California, even to a Brit like myself. There is not the slightest feeling that this movie is supposed to take place in northern New York State.