Mr. Carrey gets some of his biggest laughs in years by playing up the darker side of his character's small-mindedness.
Bruce Almighty (2003)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:167
Fresh:82
Rotten:85
Average Rating:5.7/10
Consensus: Carrey is hilarious in the slapstick scenes, but Bruce Almighty gets bogged down in treacle.
Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Jim Carrey returns to his zany, manic roots in this Capraesque comedy from director Tom Shadyac (ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE and LIAR LIAR). Carrey stars as Bruce Nolan, a television reporter in... Jim Carrey returns to his zany, manic roots in this Capraesque comedy from director Tom Shadyac (ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE and LIAR LIAR). Carrey stars as Bruce Nolan, a television reporter in Buffalo, New York who lives a normal life with his sweet girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston). But Bruce isn't satisfied, and after a particularly bad day where everything goes wrong, he blames God. After spewing a tirade of curses God's way, God (Morgan Freeman in a gentlemanly white suit) responds and challenges Bruce to take over and see if he can run things better. Of course, there are some conditions; Bruce can only have the "almighty" powers for 24 hours and only in the Buffalo area. This doesn't stop Bruce, and he responds to his newfound powers with selfish, childlike zeal. Like a kid in a candy store, Bruce sets off making one hysterical, yet disastrous, decision after another. He pulls the moon closer to the earth so he can have a more romantic evening with Grace, unaware that his actions cause a tidal wave in Japan and responds to the prayers of the world with a mass-email "yes" that creates millions of lottery winners, riots, and mayhem. Ultimately, Bruce proves he is only human, and cannot possibly fill God's shoes, although he has a great time trying. [More]
Starring: Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Baker Hall
Starring: Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Baker Hall, Catherine Bell, Lisa Ann Walter, Steven Carell, Nora Dunn, Ken Rudúlph
Director: Tom Shadyac
Director: Tom Shadyac
Screenwriter: Michael O'Keefe, Steve Koren, Steve Oedekerk
Producer: Tom Shadyac, Jim Carrey, James D. Brubaker, Michael Bostick, Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe
Studio: Universal Pictures
Reviews for Bruce Almighty
The yocks appeal mostly to the juvenile funnybone. But, the message -- humility through wish fulfillment -- is too mocked up with a supposed sympathy for the character than that which we discover on screen.
Bruce Almighty is a walking mid-life crisis bankrupt of knowledge and energy, and the sad part is that no one involved even seems to realize it.
Todo Poderoso é capaz de fazer rir, é verdade. Mas está longe de ser a milagrosa comédia que sua interessante premissa poderia ter gerado.
Would have been better if Keifer Sutherland had reprised his role as the voice of God.
Carrey’s latest is a return if you will - albeit only a slightly more mature one - to the slapstick that made his the biggest name in big-screen comedies.
In the beginning, there was a comic talking out of his butt. And it was good.
There’s something to be said for a film that keeps us smiling rather than one that has a few funny moments before disappearing from memory forever.
Director Shadyac (Liar Liar) knows how to play Carrey's instrument in such a way that he can have a real story & still play up the laughs & supernatural aspects to the hilt.
The film is worth seeing for Freeman and a few isolated gags, but Bruce is never the wildly funny farce it might have been, nor the deep-dish meaning-of-life tract it thinks it is.
Bruce Almighty is proof that "high concept" movies can also be well-crafted and ambitious...There’s plenty of smart comic filmmaking at play throughout.
The humor works (albeit with reservations), and once you get through the syrup, the film has a surprisingly relevant and humanistic lesson to pontificate.
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