Review of Evan Almighty (2007) by Markb. — 26 Aug 2007

The best on-screen portrayal of the Deity of all time was given not by George Burns or Morgan Freeman, but over 70 years ago by Rex Ingram. In the 1936 film version of Marc Connelly's The Green Pastures, a reimagining of Old Testament Bible stories as Connelly assumed that many African-Americans saw them (and still an extremely entertaining and moving film, if you choose to overlook certain attitudes that were inextricably part of its time), Ingram plays "de Lawd" with tremendous dignity, majesty and a sly sense of humor.

So it's absolutely no insult to Morgan Freeman to place him a close second to Ingram in the all-time cinematic God sweepstakes; unlike George Burns, who plays him a little TOO folksy for my tastes, Freeman balances wisdom, authority and casualness perfectly--and looks better in a white suit than Steve Martin and Tom Wolfe combined! Freeman's first appearance in his "biggest" role was opposite Jim Carrey in the underrated Bruce Almighty, a consistently amusing and occasionally rather insightful mainstream comedy whose major point--that man is completely incapable and ill-equipped to "play God"--is one that even some atheists and agnostics can live with.

In this pleasant, family-oriented sequel, Freeman returns, issuing divine orders to the title character (Steve Carell, a newscaster in the first film and a politician here) to build an ark because, well, the heavenly weather forecast is calling for LOTS of rain.

A major sticking point is that in the Book of Genesis, God promised Noah that He'd never flood the earth again, but this movie sidesteps this particular caveat rather cleverly. I also admired Evan Almighty's subtle conservationist message; it's puzzled me for a long time that the right wing has been so successfully able to hijack the energy issue almost to the degree of convincing a substantial portion of the fundamentalist community that Al Gore is practically the Antichrist, when it seems far more logical for Christians to want to exercise judicious stewardship over what God has entrusted man with rather than prodigally burning through it as though tomorrow's never coming.

(Notably, some Christian leaders, such as Rick Warren, have recently thrown in with the environmentalists.) As a comedy, Evan Almighty has its flaws; being a Noah's Ark movie there are inevitably lots of jokes about animals, but noticeably quite a few more deal with what comes out of them than what goes in, which appears to be both a biological and a mathematical impossibility.

But you don't have to be God Himself to be able to forgive the movie's faults anytime Freeman or Carell (who's a riot whether trying to control his kids, his critters, or his rapidly growing acres of unruly facial hair) are onscreen, individually or together.

There's nobody around these days who's more capable than Carell of blending silliness and sympathy: in his TV series The Office he can make you cringe with embarrassment at his character's clueless gaucheries one moment and break your heart over his loneliness the next.

..and then, of course, there's his breakthrough movie The 40 Year Old Virgin, in which he and Catherine Keener transformed two hours of dick jokes into a surprisingly poignant, resonant love story.

Evan Almighty doesn't always completely open the comedic floodgates, but Carell and Freeman are such consummate miracle workers that they more than keep this ark afloat.