Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Word on this one so far is soft... reeeeeal soft. I hope it’s not true, but the script I read was pretty soft, so maybe this is going to turn out to be a lesser effort from Jim Carrey. Let’s see what Mean Mr. Mustard has to say about it:
Moriarty, Mean Mr. Mustard here, and I just got back from a screening of Bruce Almighty.
I'm trying really hard to be fair with this one because I was a big Jim Carrey fan back in the day. Watching Carrey weekly on In Living Color was a huge part of my teenage years. Part of a "only we get it" ritual that I had with my friends back then was seeing who could do the best Fire Marshal Bill. And 1994 is a year that I remember fondly as Carrey's year. Ace Ventura, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber. Has any actor since had a triple like that in a lone year?
Well, back to Bruce Almighty, and sorry to say, it doesn't work. Everyone knows the set up by now, Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, a third rate television reporter in Buffalo, NY who gets assigned the "fluff" stories. Bruce is having a bad week, blames God for all of his problems, and what do you know, God, who is played by Morgan Freeman gives Bruce the chance to be God for 7 days.
There is a whole lot that just did not work in the film. For one thing, from the start, Bruce is Carrey. Mugging in the camera, acting goofy, just Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey. So what gives Bruce the right to complain that no one takes him seriously at the station, that he gets the joke assignments, and to be sour at being passed over for a nightly anchor position? After all, the guy is a clown, and when you think about it, his respect at the station, his assignments, and his being passed over for the anchor position is Bruce's own doings because he is a clown. Carrey should have underplayed Bruce in the beginning. Bruce should have just been a bland, luckless bore, almost like Stanley Ipkiss in The Mask. Then when Bruce gets his shot at being God, that's when Bruce has the right to become Jim Carrey in full throttle.
Another thing that didn't work is the fact that while OK, he is not getting the choice assignments and respect at work, Bruce does have a neat cushy job, a decent car, a beautiful apartment, from the looks of the apartment I'm guessing a pretty decent salary, an adorable dog, and a sweet grade school teacher girlfriend, Grace, played by Jennifer Aniston no less. Can't Bruce just calm down, take a look at what he has, and enjoy life? Can't he thnk God that he has a girlfriend that looks like Aniston? Well, no because then there would be no movie. So why should we, the audience care or sympathize with Bruce when he does throw his tantrum, and starts cursing out God. We don't.
The middle section of the film was total phony baloney. We are suppose to believe that almost everyone wins the lottery and the world is under total caos because Bruce answered yes to everyone's prayers just to get them out of the way. But what about a horney 13 year old kid praying to get laid, a dictator praying for world domination, a kid who flunked Algebra that prays that his teacher dies and rots in hell, and most logically, a prayer from yet another shmuck to be the all powerful God. In the real world yes, God would probably get those prayers every day. In a PG-13 film that plays it safe and has no edge, are you kidding?
And the yes, the ending was predictable, pure sap. Aniston was absolutely wasted, and the only reason that I think Freeman is in this film, besides adding a little class, is because he excelles at making speeches. Bruce Almighty is directed by Carrey's buddy, Tom Shadyac (Liar Liar, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) and Shadyac also gave us another film that was just as gooey as Bruce Almighty and left the same sour after taste. That film was Patch Adams.
I'm going to make some early summer box office predictions here. Bruce Almighty will open fairly well, but let's be honest, Matrix: Reloded and X Men will be huge, huge, huge, and I've got a strong feeling that Down with Love will be the sleeper of the early summer. The week after Bruce opens, Finding Nemo will dominate. My gut says that word will get out quickly that Bruce Almighty stinks and it will end up grossing between 60-80 million domestically, similar to Me, Myself & Irene a few summers back. And something tells me Carrey will be pretty pissed if that film with Rene (Down with Love) out grosses Bruce.
Mean Mr. Mustard Out.
Man, I hope you were just in a bad mood when you saw this. I really do.
"Moriarty" out.
