Bruce unfunny

Noel Vera

Jim Carrey's latest picture "Bruce Almighty" turns on an ingenious
premise: what if Jim Carrey, star of the "Ace Ventura" films and
generally acknowledged all-around wild guy, were given the powers of
the Lord--walking on water, turning it into wine, the works?

It starts off promisingly enough, with Bruce Nolan (Carrey) having
the worse day of his life--losing the top position at a TV news show
to rival Evan (Steven Carell), having a painful argument with his
girlfriend, Grace (Jennifer Aniston), getting badly beaten by a gang
of thugs tormenting an old man. Finally Bruce comes out and says
it, that he could do a better job at running the world than God
could; God takes him at his word and (as the ads for the film keep
telling you) Gives Him the Power, after which All Jim Breaks Loose.

For a while, anyway. Carrey's funny enough when he conjures a
monkey out of a tormenter's rectum, ropes the moon closer for a more
romantic view, and zaps Aniston (who's delightfully game) with minor
orgasms in preparation for the major (Immaculately Conceived?) one.
But just when we've been wooed and seduced with a little hanky-panky
foreplay, just when we find ourselves relaxed and ready for some
real action, Carrey rears up and delivers a lecture on the misuse of
power and the need to stop depending on God and create our own
destiny. The overall effect is a little…frustrating, to put it
politely.

Morgan Freeman gives the best performance in the picture as God; if
anything, he's overqualified, what with his stentorian voice and
hugely intense eyes, just the hint of an immense weariness behind
them as if his omniscience has caused him to see a little too much.
He's no slouch at comedy, either; he's pushing a mop when we first
meet him, and deftly manages to wrangle a promise out of Bruce to
help clean up the floor at some future date; he also delivers
an "alrighty, then" that's inexplicably, irreducibly funny. You can
imagine he'd make for a warm and gentle deity, with just enough
steel under all that gentleness to deliver an important lesson or
two.

Problem is we're not there to hear a lesson from Freeman (either in
responsible power management or subtle comic underplaying); we're
there to watch a Jim Carrey movie. When I first saw him in "In
Living Color," wreaking havoc on the image of Julia Roberts in her
knee-high "Pretty Woman" boots (his parody was titled "Pretty Buff
Woman"), I thought Carrey was one of the more out-there
practitioners of the politically incorrect, outrageously physical
comedy Jerry Lewis once performed; Carrey breaking out in "Ace
Ventura, Pet Detective," and "The Mask" was but confirmation of what
I suspected all along.

Then came the problem: Carrey wanted to be taken seriously. He went
for roles like the lead in "Man in the Moon," Milos Forman's earnest
biography of performance terrorist Andy Kaufman (with the crucial
difference that where Carrey was 'out there' with his comedy,
Kaufman was orbital; Carrey, unfortunately, didn't do justice to
Kaufman's unique ideas of what constitutes 'comedy'). He appeared
in movies like "Liar, Liar," about a lawyer who finds himself unable
to tell anything except the absolute truth, and becomes a better man
for it. "Bruce Almighty" follows in "Liar's" stumblebum footsteps--
it's funny at first, then grows increasingly greasy and cold when
the man at the center of the fantastical dilemma (unable to tell a
lie, able to walk on water) begins to learn from his experiences.

It's the classic dilemma of most comedians: when Woody Allen was
labeled 'comic genius,' he wanted the word 'comic' struck from the
label. Ever since he's done awful films ("Interiors"), mediocre
("Broadway Danny Rose"), and occasionally decent ("Purple Rose of
Cairo"). What he's never done, however is repeat the crazy highs he
attained with haphazardly made, hit-and-run movies like "Love and
Death," "Take the Money and Run," "Sleepers," and "Bananas." Bill
Murray is a somewhat different case: achieved popularity with
lowbrow fare like "Meatballs," "Stripes," and "Ghostbusters,"
achieved commercial disaster with the costumed drama "The Razor's
Edge," has since done not-quite-as-popular yet interesting work in
films like "Rushmore," "Hamlet," and--possibly the best thing he's
ever been in--Harold Ramis' "Groundhog Day."

"Groundhog Day" should have been Carrey's model: like "Bruce," the
picture takes off from an interesting idea (what if you were doomed
to repeat a certain day over and over again, endlessly?) and is an
attempt to showcase Murray's charms. Unlike "Bruce" "Groundhog"
actually explores the full philosophical and metaphysical
implications of its premise, is consistently (and outstandingly)
funny, and succeeds in selling its case--that Murray is a talented
actor--without working up much sweat (by way of
comparison "Bruce," "Liar, Liar," and, for that matter, practically
every movie in Carrey's career feels drenched with effort). Too
bad; instead of stunning us with a near-divine comedy, Carrey slugs
us with a hell of a boring sermon.

(First printed in Businessworld, May 30, 2003)

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