Not so mighty

Rating: Null/10 (1 June 2003)

This film has excited some controversy from devout Christians because of it's rather whimsical view of God. I'm not religious by nature but it occurred to me in watching this film that a true believer would have little use for it. Why would God "go on vacation" and leave his powers to a self-centered loser like Jim Carrey's character? Maybe he had in mind a lesson for Jim but what about the effects on everyone else, which includes a tidal wave that kills people? To a believer, God is more than the product of a screen writer's imagination but that's all we see here.
The film also commits another type of sacrilege by showing a clip from "It's a Wonderful Life", hopefully suggesting that this film is a modern version of that one. Actually in tone and substance it more resembles Mel Gibson's film "What Women Want", although even that film is better than this one. After all the "hey, look what I can do" gross-out humor, (such as a monkey who makes a home in a thug's rear end), the sentimentality that dominates the end of the film comes out as phony and superficial.
The same is true for Carrey himself who continues to play his roles as if he were a split personality, Jimmy Stewart meets Jerry Lewis. Somehow the combination reduces both of them. In "The Majestic", it was mostly Stewart in another derivative film, ("The Return of Martin Guerre" meets "Cinema Paradisio" meets "Guilty by Suspicion" with the Sullivan Ballou letter form Ken Burns "The Civil War" thrown in). In this one it's more Lewis. Carrey has to find the right combination- or find his own persona- now that the teenyboppers who improbably made "Ace Ventura" a hit have grown up.
Meanwhile, like moths to a flame, other performers are attracted to a Carrey film for the exposure what they presume will be a guaranteed hit will give them. Morgan Freeman plays God as a janitor, (maybe the one bit of true cleverness in the film: he's always asked to clean up other people's messes). Jennifer Anniston is the girlfriend who is both hopelessly smitten by Carrey yet disgusted by his self-absorption. Catherine Bell of JAG plays a sexy newscaster who tries to seduce Carrey at a party. Whether they got what they wanted from appearing in this film remains to be seen. This member of the audience sure didn't.