Bruce Almighty

Rating

Director

Tom Shadyac

Screenplay

Steve Koren, Mark O’Keefe, Steve Oedekerk

Length

101 min.

Starring

Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Baker Hall, Catherine Bell, Lisa Ann Walter, Steven Carell, Nora Dunn

MPAA Rating

PG-13 (For language, sexual content and some crude humor)

Review

Have you ever felt that your life lacked direction? Do you feel that a higher power is out to ruin your fun? Bruce Almighty explores these questions as Jim Carrey plays an irreverent reporter with God on his mind.

Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, a reporter for Channel 7 in Buffalo, New York. He’s jockeying for an anchor position while doing human-interest stories that stretch his patience. His girlfriend Grace, played by Emmy winner Jennifer Aniston, is upset that all they talk about is Bruce and his career. The simple act of going through a pile of photos to put them into an album becomes an exercise in frustration as Bruce can barely concentrate. After losing the position to back-stabbing coworker Evan Baxter (Steven Carell), Bruce’s life takes a turn for the worst as he crashes his car, gets beat up by a street gang and loses his job for going crazy on a live remote. Every step of the way, he curses God for ignoring him and his life, forgetting he even exists.

Life in shambles, Bruce receives a page from a mysterious number. When he finally returns the call, it’s a job offer from the man upstairs himself, personified by Morgan Freeman. Bruce is endowed with the Lord’s power and proceeds to create solutions for himself while ignoring everyone and everything else around him. Meanwhile, his newfound power causes him to forget the one person who’s most important to him, his girlfriend.

Carrey delights as the irreverent journalist Bruce Nolan. His performance is deft and classic with a little too much manic added in. Aniston provides outstanding support as the loving girlfriend who must put up with a self-centered boyfriend. Meanwhile, many of the other characters remain two-dimensional. The one exception of the supporting cast is The Daily Show ‘s Carell. His facial acrobatics fit well into the exceptionally funny scene where Bruce decides to sabotage Baxter’s new anchor position by making him speak gibberish with his new found powers.

The screenplay by Steve Koren, Mark O’Keefe and Steve Oedekerk is tremendously funny, but the ending is not only predictable, it’s down right obvious. This one mistake costs the film a great deal of its emotional impact, despite leaving the audience with a positive outlook on the results. Director Tom Shadyac does very well blending comic timing and dramatic pause to great effect. His work has generated a comedy that audiences of all ages will enjoy.

Bruce Almighty is an uproarious, enjoyable comedic farce that explores religion in many aspects. It asks the question that if God were omnipotent and omnipresent, how could he let the things in this world happen. If everyone got their way, it would only cause mass confusion and chaos because even in the most positive of lives, a little rain must fall. Audiences of any faith will find deep, meaningful thoughts in this film despite it being so obviously Judeo-Christian-specific.

Review Written

May 30, 2003