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Okay, so we’re supposed to believe that Jim Carrey AKA Bruce Nolan, a mediocre TV news reporter who can make the audience laugh with his weird faces and whacked out ways, gets to be God for a while. Right. I know this was just a movie, but come on! Give the audience some credit, for God’s sakes! (No pun intended.)
In a nutshell, Bruce has a run of bad luck with his job and pretty much tells God (played by Morgan Freeman) that he could do a better job of running the show. Hearing this, God decides to give Bruce a chance to prove himself and hands over the power of creation and destruction -- and Bruce spends all of his time worrying about himself.
What, I wonder, did Bruce’s girlfriend, Grace (Jennifer Aniston), see in him? In fact, why would a big star like Aniston take such a silly part in the first place?
Grace sees Bruce kiss a fellow reporter, gets upset, and spends the rest of the movie attempting to figure out what exactly she sees in Bruce. When Bruce falls short of her expectations again, she finally leaves him. Because Bruce has been forbidden to try and mess with anyone’s “free will” (though he still tries), he can’t make Grace love him.
The plot was shallow. The characters -- other than Carrey -- were almost nonexistent. Except, of course, Morgan Freeman. He’s just a great actor no matter what role he plays. His lines weren’t stunning, but I could actually believe he was God.
I was disappointed with the whole movie. I mean, wouldn’t someone who was God for a day do all the good he could, rather than think about his petty self and worry about his girlfriend and whether she loved him or not? Wouldn’t God be a little disappointed with a man who could only come up with potty-training his dog, parting a bowl of tomato soup (apparently to signify Moses’ parting of the Red Sea), spurting water out of fire hydrants, or using the Internet to keep track of the calls from the poor and needy?
At one point, though, I actually laughed out loud. It was a stupid Jim Carrey move -- Bruce makes the TV announcer talk gibberish -- and one would have thought it would lose power when the scene lasted way too long. But the length was actually why it ended up being so darn funny.
Bruce Almighty is stupid, and it’s funny. I’ll give it that much. But one would think a movie producer could come up with a more substantial plot when putting God on the screen.
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