Directed by: Tom Shadyac
Starring: Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman
Rating: PG
Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman in Evan Almighty. (Courtesy photo)
The trailers we saw before Steve Carell’s new movie Evan Almighty included another Carell film called Dan in Real Life. It looked charming and funny and emotionally satisfying, and instantly I wished I were seeing that film instead. Evan Almighty is the most expensive comedy of all time, having cost somewhere between $175 million and $275 million to make. Universal Pictures, the studio that released Evan Almighty, was concerned that this would influence moviegoers’ perception. I’m not sure the average moviegoer really cares how much something costs, as long as it’s entertaining. Evan Almighty is not very entertaining. It’s not terrible; it’s just a very small movie with very expensive background performers. The mix of real and computer-generated animals lends surprisingly little to the story. In fact, you’ve seen nearly all the good bits in the trailer. Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman make the film watchable, but this very mild comedy is hardly the summer crowd-pleaser it’s supposed to be.
Evan Baxter (Carell) has just been elected to Congress. He moves wife Joan (Lauren Graham) and their three sons to a fancy Virginia housing development, and drives his Hummer to his surprisingly posh new office. At the recommendation of his support staff (John Michael Higgins, Wanda Sykes, and the suddenly ubiquitous Jonah Hill), Evan jumps onto the latest piece of legislation by Congressman Long (John Goodman). Never mind that the bill will destroy national parks, or that Long’s demands keep Evan from his family. Evan even tries to ignore the crate of old tools that arrives at his front door and the piles of wood that are mysteriously dumped on his lawn. Finally, God (Freeman, who else?) arrives to give Evan another assignment: build an ark. Evan resists, but the arrival of many, many animals finally forces him to start building.
Events play out in such predictable fashion that you feel like you’re already watching the movie for the second time. We tell ourselves that the amusing scenes leading to Evan’s transformation to Noah are just setting up the really good stuff. But once Evan has committed to the ark and grows his white beard, he stops being funny altogether. This Noah turns out to be quite the wet blanket. Evan Almighty has a fairly pronounced and simplistic religious streak through it, as is no surprise. But no one looks comfortable saying writer Steve Oedekerk’s half-hearted pro-God dialogue. Tom Shadyac directed Jim Carrey to fun, zany results in the sort-of predecessor Bruce Almighty, but he never imbues this one with the same energy. The movie seems so concerned with offending no one that it waters down the spirituality to a few nifty catch-phrases.
If you need God to spout clichéd axioms, it sure helps to have Morgan Freeman doing the spouting. Freeman seems to be having a genuinely good time here, and he lights things up with each appearance. He and Carell work nicely off each other. Carell only grows more likable with each major screen role—so astoundingly removed from his hilariously insufferable Office creation, Michael Scott. But what happened to the Evan Baxter from Bruce Almighty? That slick news anchor who was so thoroughly humiliated by Carrey at the end of the movie would have been a much more interesting guy to transition into this story. Instead, Evan is just a nice, slightly misguided guy with a great family.
Lauren Graham has built legions of fans as the stubborn, fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore on the recently canceled Gilmore Girls. She is misused as Evan’s window-dressing wife. Graham tries to make something out of her barely fleshed-out role (a signature problem for writer Oedekerk and director Shadyac), and the results are sometimes uncomfortable. Wanda Sykes has a couple of very funny lines as Evan’s executive assistant. It’s the dozen unfunny lines that do her in. John Goodman simply goes through the motions as the bully politician. John Michael Higgins (The Break-Up) has his moments as Evan’s chief advisor, and Jonah Hill (Knocked Up) gets the best laughs as an overly adoring aide.
The cost of a movie may not affect moviegoer perception, but it does matter in plenty of other ways. Evan Almighty failed to lure the massive audiences it was hoping for, and it will end up losing a fair chunk of money. It’s not Steve Carell’s fault that Evan Almighty is such a bland, inconsequential, little film. He remains one of the few comic actors who can generate laughs out of the most mundane bits of business, and he’s the only real reason to see the movie. Maybe the producers will learn the lesson that a nicely wrapped package isn’t enough—there still has to be something special inside. Or maybe they’ll look past Evan Almighty at the stunning success of Wild Hogs and decide that, more often than not, the package actually is enough.
Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, California, and works for the Cartoon Network. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard residents for many years.
