Review of Evan Almighty (2007) by Dawdlingpoet — 27 Nov 2021

This is a pretty wacky movie, with Steve Carell playing a, on first impressions, mild mannered family man, who, when scared or susprised and so on, uses his usual facial expressions to over emote and become this quite comical figure.

The special effects are quite good, there's certainly plenty of CGI used (mainly the animals that follow Evan around, which I presume are mainly CGI), as you'd expect, given the story.

There is definitely humour here, mainly in the daftness of it, with animals in pairs following Evan around as I say, birds covering his office and Evan having to deal with it and act as if everything is normal. Then there are little jokes like Evan being given an 'Ark Building for Dummies' book by God.

There are clearly moral issues or messages being raised in this movie, environmental issues, these being that we should look after our land, not build on it all, preserve ecosystems and look after wildlife.

Its a pretty enjoyable movie that is family friendly, im sure that children would enjoy it for the animals and the CGI and they'd probably find the humour/comedy quite funny. I like that there is the more slapstick or visual comedy but there's also humour that adults can enjoy too, like the dummies book I already mentioned as well as one scene where he has a magazine open on an article about 'the metrosexual man', when he's trying to get used to his new 'look' (long flowing beard and all).

This is quite a sentimental movie and of course it is fairly mushy, like some other family movies, so expect that. Given the family aspect (his relationship with his wife is severely strained) and the moral environmental issues or messages raised, it may seem a little preachy and sentimental for some but I don't think that its too bad, as long as you know what its like and what to expect then you should enjoy it. I guess its true that it seems a little confused, in tha it starts off with more comedy but then it seems to try to be more of a serious movie, so you could ask - is this a comedy or a drama or what? but I think that really the comedy (very light hearted) over rides everything else, its quite amusing with some good dialog and it doesn't entirely treat itself too seriously either, even if there are more serious messages behind it. Morgan Freeman seems to be quite a good choice to play the 'Almighty' himself, being quite laid back and having fun watching what Evan does and offering some choice pieces of advice along the way. Yes it does try to make you think about environmental issues and so on but it isn't so full on that it ruins the comedy, which is the best part of it, in my opinion. The character of Evan himself is quite hilarious in parts, its funny where you realise quite how vain he is, with a very rigorous sort of beauty regime, which gets very much upset when he goes into the bathroom one morning to find he's suddenly grown a beard and no matter how quickly he shaves it off, it re-appears again almost instantly!.

This is a decent enough family movie, with good casting. Carell does well as the modern day Noah and there is some pretty impressive CGI, especially towards the end as the fateful day arrives!. Some may complain or may have complained that it seems a bit preachy but I didn't feel that it was anymore so than other family movies to be honest, I mean there are plenty of family friendly movies that have sub plots or messages about the environment, it isn't entirely shoved down our throats I felt and so it didn't bother me. I can see that this is a movie that kids would get at least some laughs from and there's the odd joke for adults too.

It may be a little preachy or sentimenal for some perhaps and could be seen as being a little confused mixed serious messages with comedy but I did enjoy watching it all the same and to be honest, I thought that it was better than I had expected, having noted some luke warm to really quite bad reviews of it in the past.