Well, first of all, let
me get this out of the way. I don’t believe in God, and I never intend to
start believing. Bruce Almighty just goes to prove my point. If there
really was a God, then he would definitely have saved everyone from having to
experience the sheer pain of viewing this film. It is an utterly dreadful
disaster of a picture, which only contains one scene of good, honest laughs.
Of course, the rest of the chuckling comes out of sheer pity. We actually feel
bad for the great talent wasted in Bruce Almighty. While being
repetitively punched in the face by comic cliché after comic cliché, I really
felt like praying for the first time. “Please, Lord, just make it stop, make
it stop.” Join me right now in another one. “Please, Lord, spare all the
people that you can from the pain of this reckless disaster. Bruce Almighty
is unthinkably bad. Amen.”
For what it’s worth, I will baffle you all with the rather interesting and
comedic plot, ripped to shreds by a terrible script. Bruce Nolan (Jim Carey)
is an average guy, whose life isn’t going in anywhere near the right
direction. On a particularly bad day, when he loses his job, has a fight with
his long-time girlfriend (Jennifer Anniston), and is beaten up (along with his
car) by a street gang when trying to defend a homeless man, Bruce blames God.
He stares up at the sky, on the side of the road, and starts screaming at the
top of his lungs: “Why God why?” The next day, Bruce receives a call on his
pager from a number that he doesn’t know of. He ignores the page, and
continues on living in his miserable state. Minute after minute, he receives
the exact same page over and over again, which gets to be very annoying.
Without much thought, Bruce chucks the pager out the window of his home. Even
after it is run over by a car, it keeps on beeping. The calls from the
mysterious number keep coming in. Bruce decides to call the number, and on it,
he finds a recording. It tells him to go to a specific address at a specific
time.
Bruce follows the orders that were given on the tape. He pulls up to the
building that he was told to go to on the recording, at the same time that it
said to, as well. He walks into the giant, vacant room, painted in a bright
white. A minute later, he is greeted by a janitor, who asks him to help him
sweep the floor. Bruce takes it as a joke, but says that he will do it with
him, on a rain check. The janitor will hold him to his word. Bruce goes to the
appropriate floor he’s supposed to go to, for everything in the entire
building is found on floor number seven. When Bruce reaches that floor, after
climbing up several stairs (the elevator is broken), a man that looks
identical to the janitor is waiting for him. This time the man is wearing a
white suit. This man is God (Morgan Freeman). He tells Bruce that he
understands how angry he is, and that at one point, his life will be better.
He also that explains that it’s very hard to be God. Even though Bruce doesn’t
believe that this man is actually God, and every attempt God uses to try to
convince him, he doesn’t really buy into; the ruler of the universe decides to
go with the original plan he’s created for Bruce. In order for Bruce to
experience how hard it is to make everyone on the planet happy, he grants
Bruce his powers for one week, when he will be going on vacation. When Bruce
leaves the building, he will be able to do anything that God can; for he is
God, for one week.
The advertisements and fairly favorable reviews led me to believe that
Bruce Almighty would be a riot of a comic extravaganza. But after viewing,
it’s not hard to say that it’s one of the worst movies of the year. One thing
is clearly to blame for this. The movie takes itself way to seriously. Why
can’t Hollywood make a descent comedy, that’s comprised only of pure
entertainment? Bruce Almighty tries to teach us lessons, define
religious morals, and make us respect the good decisions we make in life, and
fails miserably. The concept is good, but the way screenwriters Steve Koran,
Steve Oedekerk, and Mark O’Keefe deal with the story downright terrible. If
the entire movie had been a simple, cookie-cutter, showcase of Carey prancing
around, playing with the powers of God, then I probably would’ve been able to
recommend the film. But it’s not. Bruce Almighty is a giant collage of
cinematic madness that is not even in the least bit rewarding.
The stars are not to blame for this, however. Carey and Anniston are actually
pretty damn great together in the film. But, so what? When good performances
serve for absolutely no purpose, whatsoever, they simply act as wasted talent.
Acting can rarely save an entire movie from being the train-wreck that it sets
out to be. This proves true in this film. The performances in Bruce
Almighty are far from great. They are exceptionally entertaining, but not
enough to help boring and lifeless material. Most of the time, the doings of
Bruce Almighty are just brutal. I laughed maybe three times during the
entire movie, which is incredibly weak, considering that it is a
comedy. When I walked out the theatre, after watching some of the most forced
outtakes I’ve ever seen in my life, there was only one thought that popped up
in my head. My brain kept repeatedly saying the words: “Die Bruce Almighty,
die and rot in hell.”
Not that I need to express my hate for Bruce Almighty any longer—let’s
review. This film has a good concept, but goes terribly wrong, due to terrible
writing on Koran, Oedekerk and O’Keefe’s parts. The performances are good, and
had the potential to be very funny with a better script, but under the
confines of this material, they are instantly forgettable. Everything else is
off too—even the small amounts of special effects are extremely flawed. I
would rather be shot in the head than see Bruce Almighty again. I think
watching it puts the audience in as much pain as Bruce feels before he takes
over the job of God. If there is a God, then why did he let such trash onto
the earth?
-Danny, Bucket Reviews
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