Is it a comedy or not, guys?

Rating: 6/10 (28 March 2005)

There are two directions in which you can take a movie with the premise of Bruce Almighty. That premise, in which a mortal man is endowed with all of God's powers, is certainly an intriguing one, and lends itself to one direction or the other. Either you can make it a wild, outrageous comedy, with the comic premise being that the hero can do whatever he chooses without consequence, or you can make it a drama about the burden of power and show that every action does have a consequence. Bruce Almighty unwisely tries to do both at the same time. The hero of the story is Bruce (Jim Carrey). Now, to me, his life seemed OK; he has a job as a reporter for a Buffalo news agency, a beautiful girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston) and enough money to see him through, given the amount of fancy stuff in his house, at any rate. But Bruce isn't happy - he wants to be the network anchorman, for example. When everything in his life starts to go wrong; the office jerk gets the anchor job, Bruce cracks up on air and gets fired, he curses God for allowing all this to happen. And before you know it, God turns up, in the form of Morgan Freeman. God offers Bruce a deal: have all His powers and see if he can do better. For a while after he gets them, Bruce does all kinds of crazy things, and for that while you think the movie is taking the outrageous, wild direction, thus far seen in many of Carrey's other films, notably Ace Ventura. He parts his soup, for instance. He enlarges his girlfriend's breasts. He brings the moon closer to the earth for romantic purposes. He gives his un-housebroken dog the ability to use the toilet. And, most amusingly, he sabotages the jerk news anchor's first time on-air, making him spout gibberish. But then, suddenly, halfway through the movie, the jokes all stop. It suddenly becomes a drama, with the usual maudlin scenes, and the usual girlfriend leave/emotional crisis/win her back/crying scenario results. By the end, I was waiting for Jimmy Stewart to show up. I've seen all that before. There is, of course, a moral, which is jammed down the throat so hard it comes out your rear (not unlike a monkey in one of the film's more humorous scenes). Bruce Almighty fails because of identity crisis. It can't decide what it wants to be - comedy or drama. The cast make a good fist of it; Carrey has already established he can act, in films like The Truman Show, but here he shows that he can still flail his limbs with the best of them. Freeman is well cast as God, and does a nice job of being sufficiently divine. Aniston is less impressive, but not unbearably so. The jokes the film does have, heavily concentrated in the first half, are often hilarious. I just wish they'd gone on longer. Good-o-meter rating: 6/10