Whenever I watch Jim Carrey I get the feeling he's grabbing me by the collar, slamming his face into mine and screaming, "Laugh at me! Laugh at me, goddammit, laugh!" His efforts to be funny seem so desperate and sweaty, yet for many people it works. For instance, the DVD for this movie includes an outtake where Carrey improvises with baking utensils. Director Tom Shadyac cites this as an example of Carrey's genius, but it reminded me of another exhausting comic, Carrot Top.
Even without Carrey, the premise of "Bruce Almighty" would be charmless. Bruce Nolan (Carrey) is a Buffalo newscaster assigned to featherweight stories like the creation of the world's largest cookie. When the anchorman at his station retires, he feels he has a good chance to get promoted to the job. Instead, it goes to his loathed rival Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), a fact that he learns while doing a live report from Niagara Falls. This results in a bitter on-air hissy fit in which he insults a little old lady on a tour boat and delivers the f-word right to the camera. Naturally, he's fired. This sets off a chain of events that climax with a group of thugs beating him and vandalizing his car. He blames God for this terrible run of bad luck. God, played by Morgan Freeman in a gleaming white suit, is inordinately angered and teaches Bruce a lesson by letting him take over the job of being the Almighty. Bruce uses these new powers to teach his dog how to use the toilet, give his girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston) bigger breasts, return to his old job in a blaze of glory – and humiliate his rivals, especially Baxter.
The script makes a few feeble stabs at making Bruce seem other than the raging egomaniac and obnoxious jerk he clearly is. He helps a blind man at one point; he kinda-sorta answers some prayers. But he's mainly unsympathetic; and it seems horrific that God would give this man nearly unlimited powers just to get him to appreciate his girlfriend and learn a dubious theological lesson or two. What about all the other people affected by Bruce's antics? When Bruce inadvertently brings about tidal waves on the other side of the globe, we briefly see a TV news report showing the people harmed by this disaster. How many were killed?
God helpfully explains this favoritism near the end when he tells Bruce he has the gift of making people laugh. I would have said he has the ability to slam his fist down people's throats and rip out the laughs in bloody heaps.
Honestly, I thought Jerry Lewis was the ultimate comedian-narcissist, but not even Lewis had God fawn over his own genius; still less was there a God who let him bumble his way into destroying the lives of those who evidently aren't hilarious enough to receive special treatment.
This movie would have been so much more tolerable – for me, if not Carrey fans – if Bruce had been played by someone more likable. Just look at God Himself to see what casting can do. Morgan Freeman can tell us that a real miracle is when "a teenager says 'no' to drugs and 'yes' to an education" and make that crap sound like wisdom. In fact, what if the part of Bruce had been retooled for an elderly man so that Freeman could play *both* parts?
I know, I know. Jim Carrey is a huge box office draw, and Freeman is not. If the real God ever decides to exert himself over trivia, maybe he ought to look into that little injustice.
