"Jim Carrey is God. And he has the box office receipts to prove it."
At his best, Jim Carrey is one of the funniest men on the planet. At his most mediocre, he appears in Bruce Almighty - a limp, muddled and obnoxiously preachy little farce that has little going for it besides the 'everyman as God' schtick...and even that wears thin after 12 minutes.Granted God's powers, what would you do? Immediately help to heal earth's man-made scars? Liberate far-away peasants who are tortured and killed by vicious dictators? Maybe rescue some puppies from a local shelter...
Whatever. You wouldn't spend your time looking up ladies' skirts and making people boobies bigger. That's what Carrey does here; the gags might be a little funnier if they weren't all jammed into the TV ads and trailers.
I'm not saying that a silly throwaway comedy need possess some deep and meaningful agenda; I was prepared to gloss over the stupid plot holes by approaching the flick as a sitcom.
But when Bruce Almighty's Act III schmaltz-fest kicks in, the film feels as schizophrenic as the audience feels insulted. One minute we're watching high-tech movie goofiness; without a hiccup the flick jolts into Maudlinville, population: Jim Carrey.
It's a concept so rich with ideas (Jim Carrey with godlike powers!) that you might think they wouldn't even need a screenplay.
Apparently the producers felt the exact same way. The jokes are delivered with a rhythmic sense of predictable familiarity, Carrey's trademark physical contortions are reined in to a nearly negligible presence, the lead's co-stars are constantly in danger of being upstaged right out of existence...and then there's the schmaltz.
Suffice to say that diabetics and cynics should stay far away from what goes on in the last 20 minutes of Bruce Almighty. Not just because it's saccharine-sweet and contrived to the point of lunacy; it's also a fairly atrocious section of filmmaking altogether. It's as if everyone involved knew they had a profitable flick and rushed to get the thing finished, hoping that the editor could craft some sort of cohesive finale.
It didn't work. Carrey does earn a few mild chuckles (particularly in the film's first 30 minutes) but the one-joke concept is beaten into submission quickly, often and loudly. But hey, one simple joke is enough to open a movie BIG these days - so why bother with anything extra?There are several familiar faces in the supporting cast, some of whom may have had something noteworthy to add to the film. But an actor doesn't take a role in a Jim Carrey movie to get attention; they do it for a half-percent of the total gross.
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