The story is absurd but that doesn’t count because the premise of this movie is that God gives his power to a man for a week. If you can’t deal with this sentence do not watch the movie.
It is absurd because - even if he doesn’t give Bruce power over the world but only over his town of Buffalo - by giving a man his powers he obviously endangers other people’s lives. The fact that nobody died or was badly injured after all that happens is even more difficult to believe than a man with almighty powers. And he did not affect only his town, because when he moved the moon he caused a tsunami in Japan, which may have seemed funny is 2003, but it’s not so much after 2011.
Still, the absurdity might be overlooked, after all you know that right away so you kind of signed up for it. What I didn’t much like was, actually, Bruce. I love love love Jim Carrey and he didn’t make that many faces in this movie, which is good, he doesn’t need crazy faces to be funny, but his character was.. egocentric, selfish, annoying in all his complaints. Realistic indeed, since many people are like that in the real world, but not someone I felt inclined to like. He had a job, a house, a dog, a car, a beautiful girl who loved him very much, and he kept complaining, constantly, about everything that didn’t go the way he wanted, never once blaming himself for the mess he made.
He’s not satisfied with his reporter job, covering silly stories like ‘the biggest cookie’, and complaints that God hates him. His hockey team loses, he gets stuck in traffic, and it’s all God’s fault, ignoring him while he could help him so easily. He doesn’t read the signs when he drives, he doesn’t watch where he walks, and still it’s all God’s fault. He learns that a colleague has been promoted anchorman, the position he wanted, and ruins his first live job by shouting at a poor old woman and ranting on about the fact that he’s there doing a stupid thing while Evan gets the good job. No surprise, he’s fired. I mean, it’s not bad luck or God’s fault if he acted stupidly and like a complete A#@#@ole.
He tries to help an old man - we see him throughout the movie with strange signs like “r ewe blind” and “life is just” and many more - when a gang of guys troubles him, and is beaten up. This was the piece of the movie intended to show us for the first time that he’s also a good man deep down.
I kind of figured that by the fact that Grace loves him and she is a sweet person who works with children, but this is the first scene that proves it.
Back home he complaints on and on and on about his mediocre life, not realizing that he’s hurting Grace deeply, as if her, her love, their life together meant nothing. He doesn’t mean to hurt her, he doesn’t even think about what she feels, he only thinks about himself. All the time.
Then God tells him that he’s tired of hearing his complaints, and that he can give it a go himself if he thinks he could do a better job. Bruce starts noticing that everything he wishes becomes true, and tests it, and yes he has the power - he could make the car start, walk on water, move things at will, that kind of stuff. Well, the bit when he acted and talked like Clint Eastwood was fun :lol: he even looked like Clint :-p
Immediately he starts using his power to make his own life better. He moves the moon closer to have a romantic night of passion with Grace, makes his dog use the toilet instead of peeing all around the house, takes revenge on the guys that beat him up by having a monkey come out of a guy’s butt ( :-/ ), transforming his damaged car into a new powerful car, has another reporter arrested filling his van with marijuana, and everywhere he goes big news happen - a dog discovers a body, meteors land...
He is hired again, becomes famous as Mr Exclusive, makes Evan fail live on air with the result that Evan is fired, and arranges a big night out with Grace only to tell her that he finally got the anchorman job. She’s taken aback because she had thought that he wanted to propose, after five years together, but again it was all about him.
She doesn’t attend the big party to celebrate his promotion and he keeps calling her, even using the dog to convince her. In a way this was the best part, because in every single movie, when a man gets a little power, or a little fame which is sort of the same thing, immediately he sleeps with other women. Bruce doesn’t, he calls Grace. Unfortunately, she arrives at the precise moment when his fellow anchor-woman Susan kisses him, and she storms out and leaves him. He tries to explain, but thing is, that was only the tip of the iceberg, not the only problem. He tries to convince her to forgive him sending her sign after sign, from the tv, the clouds, the birds spelling ‘call him’ in the sky, then he goes to her to tell her that he misses her, but she doesn’t know what to say and moves to go inside with the kids, so he stops her and then he tries to use his power to make her love him but it doesn’t work - well, I don’t think that he couldn’t affect free will if he wanted to, if God made it a rule not to do it it’s because it must be possible; I think that he thought it didn’t work because she did love him already, she never stopped, love wasn’t the problem at all.
Annoyed by all the voices in his head of people praying to him, he deals with it with what he thinks will make everyone happy: he simply grants everybody’s wishes, with disastrous results. Thousands of people in his town win the lottery, but being so many their prize amounts to like 17$. There’s a big riot in the streets his first night as anchorman, and he leaves his post to walk out and see what he’s caused. God tells him that no matter how bad things appear to be, there’s always a way to clear things up - sure, since unbelievably nobody was hurt; it’s not so easy in real life when things have consequences - also if we were to take this movie seriously, blindly granting everybody’s wishes might have had even worse consequences than that, after all there’s all sorts of people in the world: what about if a fanatic had wished for God to get rid of somebody, or if someone extremely unhappy had wished to die... but this is not a movie to be taken that seriously.
God tells him that people keep asking him to do things for them instead of being themselves the miracles. Bruce finally starts acting like a real man, actually doing things instead of complaining. He helps a man whose car broke down, gives Evan his job back, even congratulating him for real, day after day teaches his dog to pee outside, and puts together the ‘family album’ with the pictures he likes best, thinking of Grace. When her sister comes for her stuff, he gives her the album - well, more than the album, it impressed me that she lived there five years and yet her stuff only fill one bag, although a big one. They could at least make her say ‘I’ll come later for the rest’ or something like that...
Grace has always prayed a lot for God to help Bruce, and now she prays again, this time for God to help her forget him, get over him so she wouldn’t hurt so much.
Hurting deeply, he goes out, walking on the highway, kneeling to pray God to take back his powers, when he is hit by a truck. He finds himself in Heaven with God who asks him to pray for what he really cares about, and he says: “Grace” - “Grace, you want her back?” - “no, I want her to be happy, no matter what that means” and goes on saying he wants her to find someone that will love her like she deserves and will make her happy. Of course he thinks he’s dead, so that ‘you want her back’ might have sounded rather threatening...
‘miraculously’ he is saved and brought back to life “you’re lucky to be alive, someone up there must like you” , the phrase I hate the most in the entire movie, as if others die because God doesn’t like them :-/
Grace of course comes to the hospital, cries and hugs him and they make peace.
Next scene shows Bruce back at his old reporting job, which now he does with a better spirit and a smile. He announces that he’s going to marry Grace who is embarrassed to appear on tv: “she just gave blood and she still has enough left to fill up her face” :-p and “yes behind every great man there’s a woman rolling her eyes” :-p
I also love Jennifer Aniston, that’s why I expected more from this movie, but still it was nice, and I liked them as a couple.
I don’t much care for Steve Carell, but here he played Evan, and it sort of seems like an audition for his very own “Evan almighty” - different Evan though.
The scene where Bruce and Grace are about to have sex is rather funny, like a wrestling match :-p
That’s all, folks. :-p
ITA una settimana da Dio
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento