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NOW P L AY I N G BRUCE ALMIGHTY (Universal Pictures, Rated PG-13) If you had a chance to play God, what would you do? Cure the world’s evils? Seek revenge on those who wronged you in the past? Make wondrous things happen with the opposite sex? Such are the challenges faced by Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) in the new Universal Pictures release Bruce Almighty. Nolan is a local TV news reporter in Buffalo,, where he’s known for doing folksy, funny human interest stories, like one about the world’s largest cookie. The job is unfulfilling, and Nolan dreams of becoming a real news anchor, an opportunity that may be within his grasp when a co-anchor retires. But then it all seems to slip away on what appears to be the worst day of Bruce’s life. Despite the patience and support of his girlfriend, Grace (Jennifer Aniston), Bruce has an emotional meltdown after being late for an important meeting, missing out on the co-anchor job, getting fired, getting beaten up by some toughs, wrecking his car, and various other lesser indignities. He rails against God for his rotten luck, wondering why the Almighty has forsaken him. Summoned to an address where a mysterious job prospect awaits, Bruce encounters a grizzled old janitor (Morgan Freeman), who Bruce takes to be a practical joker of some sort. But this is no mere trickster; it’s the Lord God himself. God’s a little tired of Bruce’s continual whining and challenges him to see if he can do a better job as the creator. There are only two restrictions, one of them being Bruce can’t interfere with free will (a dilemma that will haunt him later, when his relationship takes a downward turn). Naturally, Bruce is skeptical at first, but when he tries out his newly bestowed powers
Morgan Freeman hands the power over to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty. Photo courtesy Universal Pictures. (parting the “sea” in a bowl of tomato soup, dramatically upgrading the car he’s driving), he soon realizes that yes, indeed, he’s “got the power.” His first move is to prepare an evening of mind-blowing carnal ecstasy with Grace. Then, how about a little payback? He demands apologies from the toughs who pummeled him, prompting one to declare, “Sure, I’ll apologize…when a monkey flies outta my butt.” Easy to guess what’s gonna happen there. And in one of the film’s funniest scenes, Bruce causes his rival at the news station (Steve Carell) to start babbling idiotically during a live newscast, a sequence that only the most humorless viewer will fail to be tickled by. The thrust of the movie is Bruce’s struggle to find his true self in his new circumstances and to learn the lessons about life and love that God really intended for him. It doesn’t come easy, and when Bruce seems to have lost Grace, he finds that all those incredible powers mean nothing to him. It’s an archetypal Hollywood scenario, one with which Carrey and director Tom Shadyac do reasonably well. One thing should be said: Jim Carrey gets a lot of flack for being his rubbery-faced self. Critics have rarely praised him, except perhaps for The Truman Show and, to a lesser extent, for his portrayal of Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. But not just anybody can contort his face and body the way Carrey can and still create a char-
acter you feel for. We need our visceral comic actors, and Carrey at his best is pretty damned entertaining, using every part of his body to work a scene. He’s in full-bore funnyguy mode here, and although I thought Liar, Liar (a previous Carrey-Shadyac collaboration) was a bit more balanced character-wise between the goofy and the serious, Carrey has a great time with the premise here, and audiences should as well. Jennifer Aniston can truly nail “the girlfriend” roles by now, and though Grace doesn’t challenge her abilities the way The Good Girl did (except perhaps in one brief scene that nods to Meg Ryan’s classic fake orgasm in When Harry Met Sally), being consistently believable is deserving of respect, even when the role is a bit thin. As for Morgan Freeman, this man can do no wrong. He’s an actor with remarkable authority, and after his nutcase role in the recent Dreamcatcher, it’s a pleasure to see him back doing what he does best—acting with wit, charisma, and, in this case, the kind of ultimate authority the role of God demands. It’s almost enough to make me start praying more often, thinking that maybe Freeman could be the guy on the other end. If there’s a problem with Bruce Almighty, it’s that it’s not quite the transcendent character study it would like to be. The idea of an egotistical whiner who must learn to be a better, more unselfish person was handled with more depth in Groundhog Day. And the openly sentimental streak this movie displays is often at odds with Carrey’s stylized physical comedy, which here and there grows a tad monotonous. But the positives ultimately outweigh the negatives, as the number of well-staged scenes and big laughs keep the energy going almost to the end. And in these horrendously violent times, the theme of this movie is one that audiences should be reminded of as often as possible. Bruce Almighty isn’t quite a classic, but it’s often hilarious and touching both, and in the idea-starved conference rooms of Hollywood, that’s a minor miracle unto itself. —Kevin Renick
