Review by Calvin Trager

May 20, 2003

After a stretch of dramatic roles (The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, and The Majestic), Jim Carrey triumphantly returns to comedic form more reminiscent of Liar Liar than Me, Myself & Irene in Bruce Almighty. The outlandish, rubber-faced, exaggerated, cinematic comic is back with material that mostly matches up to his talents. At the same time, this particular project shows some occasional restraint that seems befitting of Carrey at this point in his life and career.

The setup has Carrey’s Bruce Nolan as a semi-successful guy with a long-time girlfriend and a TV reporting job that focuses on human interest features. The human interest aspect of his reporting career provides the setup for wonderful opening. Though his life could be viewed as being good, Bruce is unsatisfied with his lot and deems himself to be a failure.

As part of the worst day of his life, we are treated to Bruce’s career-ending meltdown, which takes full advantage of the out-of-control aspects of Carrey’s performance. In the aftermath, Bruce also manages to alienate his girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Anniston) and is left questioning God’s ability to do a good job.

We know from the trailers and television commercials that God (Morgan Freeman) takes Bruce up on this challenge. Bruce is given the powers of God and once he accepts them, he promptly goes on to use them for his own self betterment or entertainment.

(Is there anybody better at playing a leadership role than Morgan Freeman? The only good thing about Deep Impact was that he was the President.)

Much hilarity does indeed ensue in scenes where Bruce both explores his powers and uses them to take revenge on those who have wronged him in the past. His beat up-car becomes a shiny new Saleen, and he can part traffic as easily as he can part water. In a classic comedy set piece, he abuses his powers to create a romantic evening for himself and Grace that is just “heavenly.”

However there are consequences to his actions as well as his inaction with regards to listening to those who have requested God’s help via prayer. As Bruce figures out how to deal with these problems, he also schemes to not only get his job back, but to go a step further and get the anchor job he believes to be rightfully his. In one of the all-time great comedy scenes, Steven Carrel’s rival anchor manages to out-Carrey Jim Carrey himself in a sequence where he is under Bruce’s control.

The movie does settle into a bit of morality story where Bruce’s narcissistic attitude to life is shown to be as bad as one would expect. Of course, in the end, Bruce does realize the error of his ways, but every time it seems that the story is in danger of being terminally bogged down, more laughs are to be found, which end up leaving the audience with a smile on their faces and a satisfied reaction to the movie. Supporting turns by Catherine Bell as the temptress co-anchor who is obviously Caucasian but has the last name of “Orrrrtega” (she makes sure to roll that “R”) and a scene stealing dog also help things along.

In direct contrast to many recent comedies, Bruce Almighty steers clear of “gross” humor for the most part, and thus may find a much wider acceptance than some of the raunch and gross-out flicks that have dominated the movie release schedule recently.