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In Need of Divine Intervention
What the hell is going on inside the brains of Steve Oederkerk
and Tom Shadyac? Oederkerk's screenplay resume includes Ace
Ventura: When Nature Calls, both The Nutty Professor
movies, and Patch Adams; Mr. Shadyac's directorial
canon includes the first Ace Ventura movie, The
Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, and—does any movie
invite more derision?—Patch Adams. Robin Williams,
Eddie Murphy, and Jim Carrey probably love these guys because
there's so little direction that they're free to mug away.
These movies have no conception of life outside of themselves
that to watch them is to enter an alternative universe in
which laughter in indeed the best medicine, a man becomes
explosively fat for laughs, and in Bruce Almighty,
where God allows the death of a few hundred Chinese just to
teach some self-absorbed Yuppie a lesson.
Jim Carrey is Bruce, a local television "human interest"
reporter whose job is to cover non-events and make them funny.
His girlfriend is—get this—"Grace" (Jennifer
Anisten), one of those movie angel-wives whose charitable
job (here, a day-care director) teaches the self-obsessed
boyfriend/husband that there's more to life than just material
possessions. Bruce works in Buffalo (on the short list of
movie purgatories, along with Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit)
at a TV station in need of a new anchor. But, you see, Bruce
can't be a "serious" reporter because he's known
as the "funny guy." Then God grants him His powers,
which Bruce uses to try to make the world see him as a "serious"
reporter. But then Bruce realizes that that's not really him,
and God makes him see that there's no shame in making people
laugh.
I would like to think that Oederkerk and Shadyac see themselves
as God in this scenario—a complex worthy of Bergman or
Kubrick. Either way, this movie is about Jim Carrey's return
to comedy after an Oscar-less run at "serious" movies.
My favorite scene is when Jim Carrey, arms outstretched in
the rain, screams for the world to "love me!" It's
the most literal translation of Oederkerk and Shadyac's canon
to date, and an impressive plea for Carrey's martyrdom at
the hands of the Academy. "Lower and debase myself for
the pleasure of others," Carrey scoffs—yes, Jim,
that's right: The Gods of Moviedom have commanded you to make
comedy blockbusters for the masses.
And while we're considering the meta-dynamics of Bruce
Almighty, let's deal with Morgan Freeman. Morgan has been
showing the light to white people for two decades now: He's
helped win the Civil War, drivin' to the sto', been crucified
for Clint Eastwood's sins, pointed out the follies of Sherwood
Forest, helped Tim Robbins break out of Shawkshank, figured
out a riddle for Brad Pitt, fought for the abolition of slavery,
Presidentially guided the nation through a meteor crisis,
helps kickboxing Ashley Judd find a killer, and been THE WILD
CARD. The only possible career move is to play God. And why
not? The Enlightened Minority is God's proxy anyway, a dark
angel in disguise to help uptight white people from all walks
of life, so why not just move on up to the penthouse? And
Morgan confirms something we've known all along: God wears
a Yankees hat. The bastard.
This movie would have been a lot more entertaining had it
been Kiefer Sutherland's voice on the other end of Bruce's
beeper, but as Bruce Almighty instructs us, you can't
always get what you want. I wanted this movie to be a funny
counter-riff on Carrey's last brush with the Divine, The
Truman Show. That film imagined Jim Carrey's life as a
big television show, written, directed, and produced by God—or,
in that case, Ed Harris. For my money, The Truman Show
is one of the ten best films of the 1990's—a cultural
and spiritual inquiry into the conflict between Calvinism
and free will, ultimately arriving at the conclusion that
if God really does have a plan for us, then we have no humanity,
and our only rational decision is to deny our Maker. Bruce
Almighty could have been the comic flip-side of The
Truman Show, a Python-esque shattering of religious pretensions,
that our Lord is probably a lot more hands-off than we've
been led to believe. Instead, the God set-up is just a vehicle
for dog-pee gags and Jim Carrey unleashing pent-up frustration.
Carrey is reliable (don't miss his Clint Eastwood impersonation),
and Oederkerk and Shadyac throw us a few bones, like Carrey
dressed as Mark Twain covering an asteroid explosion. Any
positive marks are negated, however, for the joke that Gandhi
was so mad at God that "he didn't eat for three weeks."
The fundamental problem with the film's premise is that it
mocks and derides Yuppie self-absorption, but then indulges
precisely that in the end. Bruce uses his divine powers for
selfish purposes, but there's no acknowledgment of the world
outside of Buffalo—Bruce's own private purgatory. The
film is so petty, like when we see pictures of starving children
on TV, but God seems hell-bent on teaching Bruce how to be
a better boyfriend—speaking of which, God bless Jennifer
Anisten, who proves herself more worthy than token girlfriend
roles. But the only real winner in Bruce Almighty is
"The Daily Show" correspondent Steve Carrell, who
out-mugs Carrey when he takes over as the news anchor. If
there is a God, He will appear to some studio exec and proclaim
that Carrell and Stephen Colbert deserve more and better movie
roles. Had Bruce Almighty really been the work of the
Divine, then He would have had Steve Carrell bring John Stewart
and "The Daily Show" writers with him to the set.
Now that would be a God movie Python could be proud of. Instead,
Bruce Almighty is a film that wanted to be the Creator's
Groundhog Day, but ended up closer to Life or Something
Like It and King Ralph.
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