After breaking his long-suffering girlfriend’s heart, Bruce (Jim Carrey) begs for her forgiveness, interlocking his fingers and pleading, “Love me! Love me!”
Carrey may as well have been speaking directly to the audience. With Bruce Almighty, Carrey returns to his comedic roots full force after receiving lukewarm responses to his dramatic turns in 1999’s Man on the Moon and 2001’s The Majestic, We like our Jim Carrey funny, thank you very much, with lots of slapstick gags and potty humor and silly faces.
And Carrey has delivered.
TV reporter Bruce Nolan is trapped in a never-ending soft-news nightmare: he is forced to cover things like Buffalo’s biggest cookie and the Niagara Falls ferry boat while his rival is given a coveted anchor position back at the studio. Grace (Jennifer Aniston), Bruce’s saintly girlfriend of five years, is supportive but secretly longs for a marriage proposal. And his dog has a habit of peeing on his furniture.
Bruce, of course, blames God for all his troubles. When, one not-so-fine day, he gets fired from his job, jumped by a bunch of teenage hoodlums, and crashes his car, he curses God in a fiery speech right out of It’s a Wonderful Life. And what a coincidence – he’s even on a bridge when he does it. If we didn’t already get it, later in the film Grace watches a scene from the Frank Capra film.
And therein lies the problem with Bruce Almighty. Director Tom Shadyac longs for his film to be a heartwarming, Capra-esque epic as well as a zany, crude Carrey comedy, like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Liar Liar, both of which the director and star made together.
In the film’s first half, Carrey is over-the-top obnoxious, as if he combined his performances in Ventura, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber into one grating, face-twisting, attention-needy character. It’s obvious Carrey’s striving to be a lovable, nice guy, but he’s trying way too hard.
In the second half, Carrey leaps into The Truman Show and The Majestic territory. Here we see his (melo)dramatic abilities, which Carrey is only too willing to show off.
So, we’ve got funnyman Carrey and we’ve got soul-searching Carrey. The best of both worlds? Not quite.
After his blasphemous speech on the bridge, Bruce is approached by God himself, played by Morgan Freeman (the brightest spot in the film). God tells him “Hey – if you think you can do it better, go right ahead.” And God grants all his abilities and duties to Bruce while he gets some much-needed R&R.
Bruce immediately gets to work using his new powers for good – he does the really important stuff like teaching his dog to use the toilet, making a monkey emerge from a thug’s butt (don’t ask), and giving Grace the orgasm of her life. Within a few days, Bruce has righted all the wrongs in his life. He’s got the anchor job, a fancy sports car, and a happy girlfriend.
Most of the gags here are genuinely funny. Bruce gets to humiliate his nemesis (“The Daily Show”‘s Steve Carrell) on live TV, walk on water, enlarge Grace’s breasts, and use his mind to part tomato soup a la The Ten Commandments. Freeman shows up every once in a while, providing comic insights and advice. But then, things begin to change.
As the prayers of Buffalo’s needy flood his electronic mailbox and he learns omnipotence can’t buy happiness, Bruce channels his inner George Bailey and realizes it really is a wonderful life, even if he must spend it covering 10-foot-wide cookies for Channel 7 News.
Throughout the film, one can’t escape the feeling that Carrey is mad at his viewers. His facial contortions usually turn into grimaces and his sarcasm is too bitter and forced to fit his character’s personality. It’s as if Carrey’s saying, “You didn’t like Man on the Moon? You hated The Majestic? Well fine! Alriiiighty-then. I’ll just do my funny little act and make a gazillion dollars. You happy now?”
Perhaps the schmaltzy ending was thrown in to appease Carrey’s dramatic compulsion. Without it, Bruce Almighty could have been a biting satire or a fable about the consequences of having the Midas touch. Or at least it could have been a really funny Jim Carrey movie.
There’s a scene in the film where Bruce asks his superior why he was passed over for the anchor desk – how come he was stuck doing fluff when that loser got the hard news? “You’re good at what you do,” his boss gently tells him “You’re funny. People like you.” Carrey, in response, sticks out his bottom lip and sighs.
Listen, Jim. You are funny. You’re great at what you do and people do like you. So please stop trying so hard.
