Evan Almighty
By Jason Revill
Evan Almighty cost one hundred and seventy-five million dollars. That amount of money is nearly unfathomable, especially when you consider that it was obviously written by a monkey at a typewriter and that couldn’t have cost more that a couple bananas. Seriously, where did that money go? If it was all blown on the big climax, then someone got screwed. Someone other than the movie going public who paid to see this half assed lowest common denominator piece of crap.
As New York’s newest Congressman, former anchorman Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell) has high hopes for his life in public office. Finding an ally in the powerful Congressman Long (John Goodman), Evan is feeling pretty confident, that is until God (Morgan Freeman) visits him with instructions to build an ark. Afraid that people would think he was crazy, Evan tries to avoid going along with God’s plan and before he knows it he looks like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments with animals following him two by two.
There’s just some plot problems I need to address here. First, wasn’t Evan originally kind of a dick? That was my understanding. So here we just forget that and he’s apparently an awesome guy with a fantastic wife and three fantastic kids. Second, I don’t know about you, but if one day a friend of mine had short hair and then the next day he had a head full of white hair, a long white beard AND animals from the four corners of the Earth had began to congregate around him AND said animals started helping him build a giant ark, I think I’d believe him when he said God told him to do it. For the record, I’m still not entirely sure where these animals came from or why it was necessary for them to be there, since they actually put themselves in harms way and their presence convinced no one of Evan’s intentions. Lastly, what about all the people in Washington when the water rushed through? The ark floated past the Washington Monument, so what about all those hippies throwing Frisbees on the Mall and school kids on field trips that drowned? Seems a long way to go to make a point about land usage.
There are a couple things I don’t have any patience for and one of them is pandering. One the one hand Evan Almighty is way too preachy on the religious front, but at the say time it never really says anything. It’s as though they name drop God and praying just enough to fool Christian families into thinking this is a Christian film, while at the same time bashing you in the face with a pro-environment message to appease the Godless Liberals. Not only that, but the humor is just so watered down that it couldn’t possibly offend anyone and hinges mostly on birds pooping and Steve Carrel falling down. It looks like the filmmakers knew it wasn’t funny and went back and shot a bunch of one-liners from Wanda Sykes just to edit in. Sometimes it looks like she’s in another scene away from the action and in one instance is actually making comments while watching events unfold on a television.
I actually enjoyed Bruce Almighty quite a bit and that’s not the greatest movie ever, but Evan Almighty doesn’t hold a candle to it. In the original you had a man who was having a crisis of faith and had room to grow and learn as a character. Here we have a guy who’s doing pretty well in the beginning and doing pretty well in the end. Nothing really changes other than the evil Congressman’s bill doesn’t pass, but if you wanted to see that movie you should have rented Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It’s pretty much the same thing, but with out the ark and about half as much bird poop.
The Grade
- Story: D
- Acting: D
- Visuals: C
- Originality: C-
- Enjoyability: D-
- Overall: D
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