Bruce Almighty

[Alessandro Machi]

The first time I saw Bruce Almighty, it missed the first third of the movie but still I liked the movie.

 

Tonight, I saw Bruce Almighty from the beginning, and oh what a difference that made.

 

The performance by Jim Carey in Bruce Almighty in the opening scenes was so mind boggling bad that it took me back to film school writing class. If I had created a character who acted like Bruce (aka, Jim Carey) did, especially when we first meet the character, I would have been asked not to come back to the writing class, and rightly so.

 

I actually feel sorry for Mr. Carey, who is probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars, for breaking every rule of common writing sense, and failing so badly in the process. It's fine to want to break the rules, but give us a break. Jim Carey is so out of control in the way he introduces us to Bruce's world that he makes the writers of this script look really bad, and in turn, sabotages the whole point of making movies. Bruce Almighty does recover and overall has a message, but the beginning scenes warrant changing the channel before the movie ever takes off. If ever a movie relied on a trapped audience in a movie theatre who have already paid their money, this is it.

 

Would any writer ever want Jim Carey attached to a movie they wrote other than for the payday?

 

I always thought of Jim Carey as being a daring comedic actor who didn't want to act within a box, and some of his other movie choices demonstrate that. The Cable Guy is really an interesting movie, Ace Ventura and The Mask are treasures as well, yet it seems with Bruce Almighty, Carey just went over a ledge and splatted all over us in the process. I wonder if the dog taking a piss in the apartment was really Jim's way of warning us that we were being sprinkled on by some of Mr. Carey's poorest acting decisions when it comes to building a "character" we could possibly witness.

 

The problem with getting one's way all the time is it makes life boring and in this instance boring would have been a step up from the nonsense Mr. Carey subjected his fans to in the beginning of Bruce Almighty, and that is a hard act to follow.

[Jonathan Spear]

Agreed.

 

But there were a few hilarious bits here and there (admit it).

[Alessandro Machi]

Agreed.

 

But there were a few hilarious bits here and there (admit it).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

The first time I saw the movie, I really liked it, because I missed the first 1/3 of the movie. And the movie does get better as it goes along, it's just that awful beginning I just can't fathom, where everything Bruce does is so over the top that nothing makes sense.

 

Parts of the movie that just do not add up include how Anniston has been his loyal girlfriend when his behavior is neither nice, humble, sexy, or maliscious, it's just OBNOXIOUS!

 

No way does Carey come off as a "likeable" news reporter when he is too busy looking down on the people he is reporting about.

 

These two very huge glaring holes do not add up to Carrey being a nice, likeable guy.

 

It looks like Carey directed the movie from in front of the lens and in the early part of the movie thought nothing of sending completely contradictory messages as to what he was all about.

 

So if Carrey's point was to show that he was confused, at least make him be remotely likeable. (hey, I made a punny, remote, as in doing remotes as a news reporter)

[sneeze proof]

Jim Carey's best stuff is drama - 'The Majestic' and 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind' for me, really shows his talent.

 

That aside, I agree that his performance at the beginning of the film was crap, but then so is the story.

I guess it proves you cannot polish a turd to put it crudely.

There are parts of that movie that made me laugh hard though :)

[Guest santo]

The first act of Bruce Almighty was heavily rewritten by studio execs during "development", while the last 2/3 of the film were truer to the spec script. Jim Carrey did it for money, obviously, while Spotless and the rest of his better films were done without significant studio development of the screenplays. There is nothing that destroys both horror films and comedies like studio or broadcaster "development". Both those genres need to be done quick and fast and dirty with "raw" scripts pretty much straight from the talented writer (sometimes director-writer) with only a little trimming and editing perhaps. History proves this over and over and over again to be glaringly true. Allen, Brooks, Farleys...you name it for comedy. Horror the same.