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“Evan Almighty” not so Mighty |
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Written by MATTHEW SIEFERT
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Wednesday, 27 June 2007 |
When it was announced a couple years back that a sequel was being written to the Jim Carrey-returning-to-being-funny movie Bruce Almighty, this time around starring the former film’s chump, Steve Carell, based on the appeal of a few box office successes and The Office, there was reason enough for fans to be excited.
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“Evan Almighty”
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 Entertainment
 Art
Directed by Tom Shadyac.
Written by Steve Oedekerk.
Starring Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham.
Rated PG, 95 minutes
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With good reason— Carell has been carving his niche since his time on The Daily Show and now with a successful TV show of his own, you can safely anticipate no less. Besides, with Morgan Freeman on board again, you can expect the best.
But then you finally saw the trailer for the film and saw how ridiculous the premise was and wondered if it was possible for it to be comical beyond the initial novelty, which wears off after brief 30 seconds. This may, then, not come as a shocker, but, predictably, and unfortunately, your instincts were probably correct.
For those who were not privy to the story at all, in short, Evan Baxter (Carell), a former local TV news anchor, is now an elected U.S. Congressman trying his best with his wife (Lauren Graham) and three sons to live an exemplary life. Upon moving into a nice new house he is confronted by God (Freeman) and commanded to build an ark. What follows is, as you may expect, a series of embarrassingly juvenile scenes that are difficult to even watch with a straight face, and, worse yet, they are simply not funny.
Not that that Bruce Almighty was a particularly groundbreaking film itself, but the writers of this film took the elements of an otherwise decently creative premise, scraped it clean of all of its edges and made family-safe PG movie. Not even a slew of good comedic actors in the supporting cast—Wanda Sykes, John Michael Higgins, Jonah Hill, and Ed Helms—could redeem the film’s flimsy plot and poor writing.
What is left of the film is CGI animated animals on an ark with frosted white bearded Carell yelling his lines in an attempt to save the script. It might be a nice film for the kids, but in essence Evan Almighty is just an example of a bad idea being carried to its dull conclusion. Powered by AkoComment 2.0! |
