EVAN ALMIGHTY

(G) Starring Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, John Goodman

Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), you may recall, was the tormented nemesis of the all-powerful Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) in Bruce Almighty.

In the sequel, Bruce is absent and we pick up Evan’s story three years later. At an estimated cost of $175 million to make, it is the most expensive comedy ever made and it’s a shame so much time, money and energy has gone into a product which is so woefully condescending to its audience.

The film is the story of Evan Baxter’s relocation to Virginia as a newly-elected, ambitious young congressman.

Evan is painted as vain, career obsessed and totally unaware that the planet is in environmental crisis. We are given a few inconsistent and sloppy scenes to demonstrate this as the film opens when Evan chooses “old growth forest” timber for his new kitchen and plans a hiking trip with his three boys in his first week at his new job – we know he just won’t be able to deliver on this promise.

The platform that got Evan into office was that he wanted to “change the world”; though it is patently obvious he has no idea how to achieve this.

Yet Evan, self-serving twit that he is, is selected by God (Morgan Freeman) to sort out the problem that the Almighty feels needs resolving above all else: a scheme by a corrupt congressman (John Goodman) and some property developers to take land from America’s national parks and build on it. And to sort the problem out he must build an ark.

This may strike you (as it did this reviewer) as being an odd scale of divine priorities. Apparently God is unconcerned with the deaths of thousands of people in Iraq, ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, or any other humanitarian problem in the world.

This, perhaps, could be forgiven if the film actually had something interesting to say or was funny. Let’s just say if adults are expecting sophisticated comedy, they should look elsewhere unless you have a fondness for bodily function humour and beating yourself over the head with a hammer.

What’s most disappointing about the film is the simplistic way it deals with faith and its final, “you can change the world through acts of random kindness” message that sells every viewer short on the message of Christ.

Make no mistake, Universal planned this to be the religious go-to film for the American summer and an international blockbuster, by aggressively marketing the film to every religious organisation that would take its advertising money. This hasn’t stopped the film being a flop of almost biblical proportions.

Since The Passion of the Christ, studios have been trying to cash in on “family friendly” or “faith-based” films. Just a tip for future efforts: Christians are intelligent too.

Adrian Drayton

http://insights.uca.org.au/reviews/film/defghi/evan-almighty.htm