director
Tom Shadyac
screenwriters
Steve Koren
Mark O'Keefe
Steve Oedekerk
story by
Steve Koren
Mark O'Keefe
producers
Michael Bostick
James D. Brubaker
Jim Carrey
Steve Koren
Mark O'Keefe
Tom Shadyac
cinematographer
Dean Semler
music
John Debney
editor
Scott Hill
cast
Jim Carrey (Bruce Nolan)
Morgan Freeman (God)
Jennifer Aniston (Grace Connelly)
Philip Baker Hall (Jack Keller)
Catherine Bell (Susan Ortega)
Lisa Ann Walter (Debbie)
Steven Carell (Evan Baxter)
Nora Dunn (Ally Loman)
Sally Kirkland (Anita Mann)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 105m
u.s.
release: 5/23/03
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other tom
shadyac films
reviewed on this website:
- patch
adams
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In Bruce Almighty, Jim
Carrey, once again gamely playing a powerless schmuck for the
first reel, gets the power of God. It's not specifically what
he asked for; cursing the Creator over a particularly bad day
(humiliated during his flunky comic-relief-TV-reporter job, fired,
beaten up, etc.), Carrey just wants to know why God hates
him so. It's the suffering of Job reloaded for the media age
(will many Americans sympathize with the angst of a presumably
well-paid TV personality?), and God, in the person of Morgan
Freeman, calls Carrey to Him and offers him a job. "I'm
going on vacation," God says, blithely leaving the universe
in Carrey's jittery hands. The message is clear: If you think
being God is easy, you try it.
Bruce Almighty is interesting only insofar as it
proposes God as a basically well-meaning if remote deity, not
the maddening Shaper who drove William Blake to wonder if the
same God made the lamb and the tiger. Fundamentalists whose noses
are forever tilted for the scent of sacrilege won't find much
in the movie to object to. Morgan Freeman, for instance, embodies
God as a hip update of George Burns' avuncular, amused Lord in
Oh, God. Both actors are a stroke of casting wit, but
a wilder, funnier movie might've given us, say, Danny DeVito
or a tipsy, irritable Eddie Izzard as God (heck, we've already
had Keanu Reeves as both Buddha and a neo-Christ, no pun
intended).
Essentially, this is another
of Jim Carrey's surefire vehicles that can be whittled down to
a phrase: Jim Carrey is the Grinch;
Jim Carrey is God. I like the guy, and I wish his box-office
failures with The Majestic (understandable -- that was
a stiff) and Man on the Moon
(I still have the poster hanging on my wall) hadn't scared him
into such bland, unchallenging material. What would Jim Carrey
do if given ultimate power? The question provokes a grin of anticipation,
but he pretty much does what you see him do in the trailer. There
is one spectacularly funny bit when he sabotages the newscast
of a snotty rival (Steven Carell), but the big laughs in the
scene belong to the rival, not Carrey.
The movie seems squarely aimed
at a large audience (check the opening-weekend figures) that
might be wondering, in these harrowing times, if God knows what
He's doing. Bruce Almighty is here to reassure doubters
and put them in their place at the same time. The godlike Carrey
fritters away his power and can't even hold onto his girlfriend
of five years (Jennifer Aniston, being a good sport). Only God,
the movie says, knows how to use the power, and He uses it mostly
by not using it: "You all have the power," He
lectures Carrey. What should be a wild, unruly, possibly sacrilegious
fable -- think Life of Brian -- becomes a didactic companion
piece to The Truman Show, with
Carrey as hapless puppeteer instead of hapless puppet. And it
says essentially the same (humanist) thing: Take your life into
your own hands.
Carrey does get off some good
riffs, mostly in his pre-God fits of pique; I enjoyed his obscene
jazz-pantomime gesture, destined to be copied by giggling kids
from shore to shore. The subtext, though, shows us a man with
the power of God who's still insecure and, as the movie spells
out, wants to be loved. Carrey, who's been the closest thing
to God studio executives have seen since the canonization of
Tom Cruise, may agree with some of us that he's not using his
powers to their full potential, and this material -- which could've
been played by anyone, really -- is Exhibit A. But its box-office
returns will be hard to argue with.
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