When asked to assess the Academy Awards, Humphrey Bogart once said that the only way to truly determine who was the best actor of the year would be to “let everybody play Hamlet and let the best man win.” Certainly, it’s a concept that’s as intriguing as it is amusing (Bogart followed up by retorting, “Of course, you’d get some pretty funny Hamlets that way”), but it’s an idea that could easily apply to plots as well as people.
After all, original storylines are often a rare commodity in Hollywood; instead of witnessing a great premise wasted on a lackluster production, wouldn’t it be neat if half-a-dozen creative teams were each given free rein to bring a particular concept to the screen, and whichever group came up with the best adaptation of the idea would be the one to see its finished product playing movie houses nationally?
This notion struck me as I screened Bruce Almighty, which serves up a terrific idea for a high-concept movie yet never manages to explore the topic to its full potential. As I watched this hit-and-miss comedy while it struggled to deliver both side-splitting laughs and spiritual homilies, I found myself wishing that I could’ve had a pick of projects with the same irresistible premise. I certainly wouldn’t have chosen the version that came from the guys who brought us Patch Adams and the Ace Ventura flicks.
To their credit, director Tom Shadyac also helmed Liar Liar while scripter Steve Oedekerk penned the remake of The Nutty Professor. It goes without saying that neither film is anything special, but unlike the putrid Patch, one of the most unwatchable films of the past 10 years, those other titles at least did an acceptable job of mixing pathos with the pandemonium, a balancing act that Bruce Almighty also pulls off more often than not.
Jim Carrey, whose attempts at drama have yet to meet with the all-out success he clearly savors, retreats back into funny-man territory here, frequently playing to the rafters in what in anybody else’s hands would have been a fairly restrained and conventional character. He’s Bruce Nolan, a Buffalo TV reporter who’s tired of being the go-to guy for his station’s fluff pieces and yearns for the chance to become the new anchorman. He doesn’t get his wish — on the contrary, he ends up suffering through the worst day of his life. After an on-air breakdown, he’s fired from his job, gets beaten up by a gang of thugs, demolishes his car in an accident, and — the final indignity — watches helplessly as his dog repeatedly pees on the furniture. He has the love and support of his girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston), a compassionate woman who works at a daycare center and donates blood on a regular basis, but it isn’t enough for him. So he lashes out at God, accusing the Big Guy of not caring about a mere mortal such as himself and, basically, denouncing all things religious.
Faced with such an outburst, God (Morgan Freeman) decides to pay Bruce a personal visit, and after convincing the astonished human that he’s indeed the real thing, he offers Bruce a challenge: Play God for awhile, and see if you can do a better job of overseeing the planet.
Initially, Bruce uses his newfound gift to perform the almighty equivalent of party tricks: making a monkey fly out of a hoodlum’s butt, parting his soup as if it were the Red Sea, etc. But he soon focuses his attention and starts using his powers to further his own career, a path that forces the real God to step in and remind Bruce about the needs of all the other people on the planet. And that’s when Bruce really starts to realize that moonlighting as a deity isn’t as easy, or as fun, as it might appear.
If, as the saying goes, God is in the details, then that’s also where to look in Bruce Almighty for some of the film’s finest moments. The big set pieces — the dog sitting on the toilet (the “money shot” in the trailer), that ass-dwelling monkey — aren’t nearly as memorable as many of the throwaway bits, such as Bruce’s stream of consciousness rant as he suffers his nervous breakdown (his Titanic crack is priceless), or the way he casually warbles Joan Osborne’s “One of Us” after he receives his celestial SuperSizing. And Freeman, almost always cast as the smartest guy in the room, gets to go all the way here, playing the smartest entity in the cosmos. It’s a warm, gracious, understated turn, laced with the same degree of gentle humor that George Burns previously brought to the role in Oh, God!
Naturally, Carrey is adept (if exaggerated) with the comic shtick, but even more impressively, he has one terrific quasi-dramatic scene toward the beginning, when he feels like he’s God’s personal punching bag and works himself up into a foaming-at-the-mouth lather. It’s a strong scene because it’s one we can all relate to — after all, who among us hasn’t experienced those kinds of days where we feel the entire universe is conspiring against us? That self-righteous anger is actually the movie’s strongest suit, not only here but in later scenes when the opportunity is presented for Bruce to yield to the axiom about absolute power corrupting absolutely. It’s no wonder that at one point It’s A Wonderful Life is shown playing on TV, because Bruce’s predicament — a decent man who’s been drop-kicked by life yet given the chance to envision an alternate reality — is the same one that plagued James Stewart’s George Bailey. But because this is a summer popcorn flick above all else, Shadyac and Oedekerk refrain from taking Bruce to the edge — he never flirts with the dark side, as George Bailey did. So what’s left is harmless, acceptable entertainment, not the galvanizing religious experience that was within its almighty grasp.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2003.
