Evan Almighty (2007) June 30, 2008
Posted by gproject in : Recently Viewed , trackbackDirected by: Tom Shadyac
Universal studios, for all their sins, really got lucky with this one. Or at least so they thought until a tumultuous production budget and unpredictable lack of audience interest brought this wide-eyed comedy juggernaut to its knees. Evan Almighty is a cautionary tale in filmmaking - the proof that even when your stars seem to be aligning, there’s always the chance of a storm just around the corner.
As a direct sequel to the smash-hit Bruce Almighty, this film follows Bruce’s rival newsreader from the first film, Evan (played by Steve Carell). He has just quit the news business after a successful run for senator lands him a place in office - his pledge, to “change the world”. One night, after encouragement from his wife, he prays for assistance in this aim and gets more than he bargained for as a reply. God (Morgan Freeman) charges Evan with building an ark and warns him that a flood is imminent. Evan is left to try and juggle his regular family and work life, along with his construction commitments, against ever more pressing obstacles.
A sequel to Bruce Almighty was probably seen as inevitable by some after its immense success in 2003. And immense is the right word - this thing was unstoppable, taking in $250 million at the US box office and almost half a billion worldwide. In comedy terms, that’s huge. But when both Jim Carrey and Jennifer Aniston refused to come back for a second, the project looked to be on the rocks. Luckily, in the intervening time there had been a small explosion in the film and TV world: an explosion of talent. That talent was Steve Carell, who shot to fame after fronting the US version of The Office and starring in Judd Apatow’s defining hit The 40 Year Old Virgin. Best of all, he had appeared in some of Bruce Almighty’s most famous scenes, which put him in prime position for continuing the franchise.
And so it goes. ‘Bruce: The Second Coming’ became ‘Evan Almighty’ and everything was back on for another round of box office demolition, or so hoped Universal. The film benefits from Carell as the lead, his upbeat humour sitting well in a story that has clearly been geared to a family audience. The problem is everything around him, from the story by Steve Oedekerk, Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow, to the effects laden but still ultimately disappointing finale, nothing ever really sits right. And that’s a shame because we know that Bruce Almighty and Ace Ventura director Tom Shadyac can do this kind of entertaining comedy fare when under less restraint.
Speaking of which, there’s a scene where Morgan Freeman tries to PG-up the story of Noah’s ark by saying that it’s not about God’s wrath but about belief and love. This well-meaning statement is a tough sell though, because any tale that deals in the death of thousands in order to cleanse the land is undeniably brutal whichever way you swing it. Evan Almighty almost needs to go there just to rid itself of the colourful positivity that plagues the film throughout but, of course, it never does, copping out on the flood big time. With such a family-friendly disaster and an Ark that achieves little more than a small-scale evacuation, there’s the feeling that story has been sacrificed for an excuse to create some spectacular effects.
And I suppose that the effects sequences are quite good fun, but the knowledge that they took the film way over budget and made it the most expensive comedy movie of all time seems to undermine any slight successes. Even when Carell is at his best, the other characters around him are sorely wasted - Wanda Sykes’ role appears to be just a series of one-liner cutaways, for example. Unfortunately, any good that the film does is ultimately overshadowed by a story that, for want of a better explanation, simply fails to achieve anything. I mean, all the elements are there and the structure is clear, but what was the point of it all? You feel like God is teasing Evan, dangling his immense power over him just because he can. Long story short, God’s an ass.
After all this derision you might be amazed to hear that I didn’t hate Evan Almighty, despite its many flaws. I think I just find the story behind the movie much more interesting than the movie itself - as a postscript, the film barely broke $100 million in the US and scraped towards (but never equalled) its $175 million budget worldwide. It is a film that offers light-hearted laughs and an easy-going sensibility mainly brought on by its lead. If you don’t like Carell then drop a star and move on. Otherwise, you could do much worse for child-quietening, morally clean family fare than this. The overarching lesson that ‘whatever God does, he does because he loves us’ is well-intentioned. I can only wonder if Universal executives would still agree.
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