suppose if I had to condense my emotional reaction to the new Jim Carrey vehicle Bruce Almighty into two words or less, I’d respond “pissed off.” It’s not that the movie is godawful—Carrey’s presence alone can mitigate the dross factor in just about any script, as it does here. And it’s not that I expect greatness from a film like Bruce Almighty, because anyone familiar with the oeuvre of Tom (Patch Adams, Dragonfly) Shadyac can only hope to pray for competence in any movie he sees fit to “direct.” It’s the utterly predictable mediocrity of this movie, and its attendant shameless wasting of Carrey’s once-in-a-generation talent, that drives me up the wall.


The concept alone had me salivating the minute I heard about it over a year ago. Jim Carrey given the powers of God? Yes, please. The things any mildly imaginative screenwriter could have done with that premise had the potential to make comic history. God, as you may remember from church/synagogue/mosque attendance, is supposed to be all-powerful, the kind of dude who can control the weather, inflict the apocalypse, create a new species on a total whim, kill or bring back from the dead, arrange a Cubs-Red Sox World Series... you know, miracles. The big stuff, the stuff that forms the basis of every major world religion. The kind of stuff that should leave audiences fucking howling in their seats when said power is bestowed upon a guy like Jim Carrey.


But no. This is a summertime Hollywood comedy, and dim-witted producers have their jobs on the line, so it was apparently decided to play it safe at all costs. Thus, Bruce Almighty features Carrey using his newfound powers to part a bowl of tomato soup, clear a traffic jam, get revenge on some bullies, and give his girlfriend bigger tits. Ho ho! Aren’t you laughing now? Me neither.


Carrey plays the titular Bruce, a “special interest” Buffalo TV reporter who is sick of doing the lighter side of the news and dreams of becoming anchor. A couple of early scenes are good for genuine laughs, as Bruce reports on Buffalo’s largest chocolate-chip cookie and dons a ridiculous umbrella hat while doing a special report from the Maid of the Mist, a Niagara Falls tour boat. It is while on the boat that Bruce learns the anchorman job has gone to his hated rival (The Daily Show’s Steve Carell), which inspires a classic Carrey meltdown that by far ranks as the film’s funniest moment. Bruce, his dream shattered, rails against God’s cruel indifference to his fate. And miraculously, God responds.


The Lord on high is played by Morgan Freeman, which would be an inspired bit of casting if Freeman had been given anything to do other than look vaguely beatific and spout meaningless spiritual homilies (including, I shit you not, the immortal line “a miracle is when an inner-city girl says no to drugs and yes to an education”). His Shallowness is getting tired of Bruce blaming his ills on his Creator, and wants to see Bruce run things for a while to experience how difficult the job of Omniscient Being truly is.


So Jim Carrey now has the powers of the Almighty. Comic gold is inevitable, right? Wrong. In a stunning lack of imagination that made me want to throw something at the screen, Bruce’s top priorities seem to be using his powers to house-train his dog, seduce his girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston), and get that coveted anchor job. Bruce teaches his dog how to use the toilet, and in one priceless scene, the dog reads the newspaper while taking a shit on the can. Pardon me while I wipe the tears of mirth from mine eyes! Furthermore, he gets revenge on his reporter rival by making him talk funny while on live TV! And they say Hollywood has lost its creative spark? It’s a knee-slapper a minute with these guys!


You get the idea. Some of the individual scenes are worth a few chuckles, and Carrey’s constant mugging makes Bruce Almighty better than it has any right to be. This is a film that might be worth viewing when it inevitably shows up on the USA Network on a rainy Saturday afternoon. But beyond that, I can’t see this movie as anything other than an enormous missed opportunity. Forget the central premise for a minute-- what kind of schmuck director can’t even do anything interesting with Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Aniston, who is given an utterly thankless role and does her damndest to make something out of it? And I didn’t count one attempt at humor during the last twenty minutes of this film—it instead devolves into mawkish and unbearable pop Christianity that could send perfectly healthy theater patrons into diabetic shock. I guess I should be used to this by now—no one manages to consistently take good concepts and mainstream them to death like Hollywood can. But it’s frustrating nonetheless. Oh, the possibilities...


A word on Carrey—Bruce Almighty is being billed as his return to comedy after the relative failure of dramas like The Truman Show and The Majestic. And while it’s true that his attempted transition to dramatic acting wasn’t entirely successful, the more narrow-minded critics out there take too much glee in rubbing his nose in failure. I give the man credit for rolling the dice and trying to stretch out a little bit. It didn’t always work out, but Carrey has the goods to do just about anything he wants if he keeps his mind open. It does my heart good to learn that his next couple of projects are a Charlie Kaufman script and a remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Steven Spielberg. At best, those films could take Carrey in fascinating new comic directions. At worst, they should be interesting failures. As long as he keeps pushing himself, I really don’t care. But Bruce Almighty is not a step in the right direction.