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Evan Almighty

Review By: Stephen Snart
StephenSnart@TheCinemaSource.com

“You don’t want to be like Evan. Evan’s an asshole,” says a character played by Phillip Baker Hall in Bruce Almighty, the 2003 precursor to Evan Almighty. The titular Evan he refers to is Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), the smug rival newscaster to Jim Carrey’s Bruce in the first film, who memorably talked in tongues on air as manipulated by Bruce. In the sequel, Evan finds himself promoted to lead character and as the film begins, he resigns from his position as news anchor to begin a career in politics. He’s also no longer the “asshole” he was in the first film. Now he’s a workaholic family man with ambitions to change the world. So, as you can see, there is little character consistency between the two Almighty films. But never mind because Carell is one funny guy and whatever the excuse is to have him headline a big budget summer comedy is good enough for me.

After he brought The 40-Year-Old Virgin to $109 million at the domestic box office and NBC’s The Office to an Emmy for Best Comedy, Universal fast-tracked this long stagnating Carrey-less Bruce Almighty sequel and propelled Carell to the head of the enterprise. He even got a bigger budget than the first one… substantially. Evan Almighty holds the dubious honor of most expensive comedy ever produced. Weather delays and the difficulties of working with livestock reportedly sent the film’s production budget soaring into the vicinity of $175 million for a total of $250 after marketing has been accounted. Carell himself seemed to apologize to the media when news broke of the skyrocketing budget but as it turns out, he had little to apologize for as Evan Almighty is a fast-paced family comedy with some very funny laughs and a warm-hearted message.

Morgan Freeman – who seems to have taken his Oscar win for Million Dollar Baby as a cue to retire from serious acting – reprises his role from the first film as God. Instead of giving a narcissist a minor life lesson by handing him the reigns to the universe as he did with Bruce, he assigns Evan a much greater task: putting his political ambitions on hold in order to construct a giant ark and prepare his home town for an eminent flood. Evan reluctantly but dutifully accepts his role as modern day prophet and gets to work on the ark with the help of his three sons, bearing the public ridicule that can come with following one’s faith.

Carell seems to sense the script for Evan Almighty isn’t as strong as the ones for Virgin and Little Miss Sunshine and thus compensates by throwing in wacky dance moves, exaggerated line readings in silly voices and his other old improvisational tricks whenever possible. This wears a bit thin during the first act’s plot-less freewheeling but that’s ...