Evan Almighty (PG)
Scott:
Scott: Tonight I am reviewing Evan Almighty
, the sequel to the 2003 highly successful Bruce Almighty.
Mike couldn’t make this screening.
Scott: So what did I think?
It was thoroughly ok and generally underwhelming. Not often is a sequel made where the star leaves and it’s as good as the first movie. Examples are Caddyshack without Rodney Dangerfield, Blues Brothers minus John Belushi, and Police Academy sans Steve Guttenberg (this series was never that great, but without Guttenberg, it was miserable). With that in mind, the movie starts behind the 8-ball.
In the first movie, Bruce Almighty, Jim Carrey, as Bruce Nolan, was having the conversations with God (Morgan Freeman) and Evan Baxter (Steve Carell) took the brunt of Nolan’s jokes. Baxter was the annoying coworker in Nolan’s television newsroom. In this movie Baxter is a newly elected Congressman out to change the world. Gone is the annoying, backstabbing, spiteful man, replaced with the loving, admired family-man. So even though it’s the same actor, playing the same character, in a movie with the same premise, it’s completely different. As if winning a congressional election makes you a nice guy. Right there, you know this is a different movie with a similar name.
Baxter comes to D.C. to a beautiful suburb to start his new life in politics. His house is still being worked on when he shows up. He hasn’t even picked out the kitchen cabinets, but that doesn’t prevent him from moving in that night, or having the workers leave. It is a beautiful area though, and actually this part was filmed up near Charlottesville, VA. Richmonders will also recognize the Main St. near 9th in the movie; this scene involves sheep in his car.
When Baxter arrives he is blissfully ignorant of how beltway politics work. He is quickly brought under the wing of the sleazy Congressman Long (John Goodman). Long wants Baxter to support an eco-terrible bill, and eco-challenged Baxter is all for it at first.
Baxter asks for God’s help to bring his family closer together and God gives him an assignment to build an Ark. I would keep going but I don’t want to ruin the thin plot for you.
When you make a sequel of a borderline family/comedy, there are two ways to go: more humor, or more family. They decided to go more family with this movie. The kids in the theatre loved it, and I think a lot of the parents did too. For me, there are only so many, ‘I hit my thumb with a hammer’ jokes I can handle. Pretty quickly I reached my limit. There isn’t much humor beyond that. It’s a one joke movie, and we already heard a lot of the jokes in the last Almighty.
They do manage to make you laugh here and there in the movie. The movie marquee you see early on is funny, as is God’s nametag in the restaurant (if you can catch it). Generally, the jokes you see, are jokes you saw coming. I am one of those people that normally laugh even if I see jokes coming, and I did in this movie.
Carell is a funny person. Up to this point his characters have all been pretty similar, stiff, and oblivious. This character is different. Towards the end of his hit 40 Year Old Virgin, he became a little more experienced, and confident. Coincidentally, that was the least funny part of that movie. It’s hard to play his normal role when he is supposed to be a Congressman. So this role is somewhat reverse of where he derives his humor and consequently, it’s not his funniest movie.
Lauren Graham plays Baxter’s wife Joan. I’ve only seen Graham in Celebrity Poker Showdown – I’m not a Gilmore Girls watcher – so I was really excited to see her in this. Sadly, her role leaves much to be desired. Your husband’s hair and beard grow several inches overnight and you ask him why he’s doing this? All of the animals start showing up in pairs and you don’t think that’s odd? It was too big a leap to think she was that dumb.
Goodman as Congressman Long is everything a sleazy congressman should be. He’s crass, egotistical and greedy, so he would fit right in up in D.C. From the moment you see him you don’t like him and you know he is up to something. Goodman was a funny guy for a long time, but lately he keeps showing up as a bad guy.
The funniest person of the movie is Wanda Sykes as Rita, Baxter’s top assistant. She has several one-liners throughout the movie; actually, she may only have one-liners. With Sykes, you know what you are going to get.
I want to mention Jonah Hill as Eugene, the Walking Google. It’s funny how that line used to be Walking Encyclopedia. He has made several appearances in movies we’ve review recently. Not his best work, but then, there was a lot of that going around in this.
Director Tom Shadyac also directed Bruce Almighty as well as Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Funny that he directed Ace, but the animal effects 13 years later aren’t as good as for that movie.
What did I think?
I was disappointed and expected a lot better movie. I give this a 2 overall and a 2.5 for family movie. I didn’t know it was so family focused. Had I gone in with that in mind, I may have enjoyed it more.
