GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 5/21/03)



This picture can be summed up perfectly in two words. Ready?

God.
Awful.

But as I’m not interested in the world record for the shortest film review ever, I’ll buttress my summation. Bruce Almighty is star Jim Carrey’s return to full-on outrageous comedy, and it sports a premise that some devout souls might find too outrageous. Carrey plays a Buffalo-based TV news correspondent—actually, fluff correspondent, as he’s never given any substantive stories to cover—who, after complaining about his lot in life and the Lord’s participation in it (or lack thereof) one time too many, is summoned by God himself (a droll, warm Morgan Freeman) and told that if he thinks he can do a better job of running things, he’s free to try. Hence, Bruce is endowed with all God’s powers, which he proceeds to use in those funny ways you’ve already seen in the trailer—making his dog use the toilet, upping girlfriend Jennifer Aniston’s cup size, et cetera.

The potential for real offense is palpable, but Bruce Almighty never gets there; the script is too lazy and incoherent—truly effective blasphemy takes brains and rigor. While it fails as an uproarious theological satire (or even burlesque), Bruce Almighty functions quite cogently as an allegory of Carrey’s own career. “There’s nothing wrong with making people laugh,” Aniston’s character says to Carrey’s Bruce early on in the picture. He’s not having it. “I have no credibility,” he whines. What might be the odds that by the end of his adventure, our Bruce has learned the true value of a guffaw? Yup, this is Carrey’s own flash on Sullivan’s Travels, with a soupcon of Jerry Lewis–style self-regard/self-pity thrown in. (There’s also a too-short laptop bit in homage to Lewis’s famed typewriter gag.) Except Carrey’s not all that funny here. Bruce Almighty’s most amusing performance comes from ex-Daily Show stalwart Steven Carell, as a pompous TV cohort of Carrey’s who lands a coveted coanchor job. (At the other end of the anchor desk is pneumatic JAG star Catherine Bell, whose alarming pallor and chasmic cleavage here suggest Dawn of the Dead as remade by Russ Meyer.)

When People magazine asked Carrey what he himself would do if he had godly powers, he said he’d send all the critics who didn’t like his previous film, The Majestic, to hell. Of course, anyone who sat through The Majestic has already tasted hell, so ... oh, for fun! But seriously, if you actually believed in hell, would you really want to send people there just because they didn’t like your movie? No, of course not. I don’t think Jim Carrey believes in hell. I think Jim Carrey believes in Jim Carrey. It’s too bad that this time around, the being he has chosen to put his faith in just isn’t hacking it.

—Glenn Kenny