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Bruce Almighty was by no means a cinematic magnum opus but at least Tom Shadyac's film made a valiant attempt to fulfil what it set out to be: a star vehicle for Jim Carrey in which comedy flowed relatively freely whilst carrying an innate moral message. In his second stab at the loosely related franchise (Steve Carell takes Jim Carrey's place as a different lead focus) Shadyac balances the film rather differently - laughs are meagre in frequency and religiosity is turned up to eleven. Unfortunately, the long-awaited sequel of sorts is a disappointment to say the least. After hilarious turns in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and The 40 Year Old Virgin, Steve Carell finally had the opportunity to carry the burden of a huge budget on his shoulders (reports suggest Universal's film cost $175 million to make - the highest ever for a comedy). Similar to the feeling of thinking you've nailed an examination only to find 'FAILED' as the grade, the mouth-watering prospect of seemingly sure-fire success - Almighty brand already exists, Carell has a cult following, and a strenuous marketing campaign - does not always translate on screen to satisfy the hype.
Evan Baxter (Carell is certainly leading man material), famous for the famous autocue scene in Bruce, is resurrected by screenwriter Steve Oedekerk as a United States Congressman. He moves his family to Virginia, continually stating that he is in office to 'change the world', his campaign motto. Morgan Freeman's God picks up on this promise and basically forces Evan into justifying this pledge by instructing our protagonist to build an ark in anticipation of a forthcoming flood. The rest of the flimsy plot documents Evan's ark construction and job-doing whilst trying to execute his daily routine under the radar of his boss (an always reliable Goodman playing a villainous bent politician), his curious wife (Lauren Graham is certainly no Jen Aniston when it comes to acting or beauty), and his colleagues (famed for his role in The Late Shift as David Letterman, John Michael Higgins expresses amusement, but Jonah Hill and Wanda Sykes are acts which grow very tedious, very quickly). Granted, Oedekerk has been ambitious to try and create valid points about the much-debated social nuisances of religion and politics, but surely Universal must have realised beforehand that these two elements are not traditionally contained in summer blockbusters. Even then, hilarity still has to be at the forefront to obey genre definition, the talents of the leading man, and stances of the director and screenwriter (Ace Ventura is still Shadyac's and Oedekerk's most famous incarnation). Stupidly, with the drought-level of laughter the filmmakers further fail to exercise so many openings for political or religious orientated jokes - Oedekerk presents himself with chance after chance of hitting a boundary but throws his wicket away with irrational strokes. Maybe the audience is not supposed to take the film so seriously, but when Universal overtly goes out of its way to produce adverts about climate change and Noah references are so obvious, the film is clearly trying to articulate an ostensibly serious message. The filmmakers just do not appear to know what this message is.
The summary
A costly misfire split into good, bad, and ugly categories: Carell and the animal CGI is good, the wannabe serious script is bad, and Freeman talking gobbledegook along with the ark CGI is ugly. Next time guys, give yourselves more time to write funny and reasoned libretto.
