BRUCE ALMIGHTY

4/10

USA 2003 : Tom SHADYAC : 101 mins

Desperation now blazes from Jim Carrey’s eyes: The Truman Show was supposed to be his transition to proper acting, only for Joe Public to shun Man on the Moon and The Majestic in favour of the full-tilt JIM CARREY persona showcased in The Grinch and this latest box-office smash. Carrey knows that his dreams of respect and Oscar nominations are more remote than ever – his future consists of having to “lower and debase myself for the amusement of total strangers,” as his Bruce Almighty character angrily puts it.

Because, in a rather salt-in-the-wound bit of casting, Carrey plays a small-time TV news reporter frustrated at being confined to ‘zany’ material – he’s achingly desperate to shed his ‘wacky Bruce’ persona and become a sober, Cronkite-style anchorman. His ambitions cruelly thwarted, Bruce rants and rails at God’s injustice so much that He (Morgan Freeman, typecast) turns up and announces that He’s taking a holiday - leaving Bruce ‘in charge.’

As high-concept movies go, this is extremely high – celestially so, in fact. But hack-director Shadyac – responsible for grating ‘wacky Jim’ fare like Liar Liar  – and his three scriptwiters prove much more fallibly flawed than their omnipotent hero, resulting in a not-so-divine comedy. After a dismayingly clunky set-up, there’s a fun half-hour in the middle as the gleefully obnoxious Bruce tests out his new powers – including one great gag about the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa, of all things. But too often there’s a sense of missed opportunity, as if the film-makers were terrified of America’s vocal Christian bloc. There’s nothing to offend anyone here – apart, that is, those of us allergic to the sentimental life-lesson glop that constitutes the movie’s redemption-of-asshole final act.

15th June, 2003
(seen 5th June: Showcase, Dudley)

by Neil Young

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