Evan Almighty: The Review

Gather scored me two tickets to the Evan Almighty premiere held June 10th at Universal City Walk and I was more than happy to accept and report back. By its count the most expensive comedy ever made, Evan Almighty unfortunately fell quite a bit short of it’s attempted mark. Boasting a franchise name (sequel to Bruce Almighty) and a box office star, you might wonder what was missing from this sure-fire hit….the answer is common sense.

The story revolves around Evan Baxter (Steve Carell), a newly elected Congressional representative who campaigned on a promise to change the world – a lofty task. He uproots his family from Buffalo to a prestigious community in northern Virginia for the new job. His wife (Lauren Graham) prays to God to bring the family closer together – apparently Evan is a bit of a workaholic – and he prays to God for a little bit of help in changing the world.  

Their prayers are answered, although perhaps not in the manner either expected. Over the next few days, Evan receives sign after sign from God pointing him to bible passage Genesis 6:14, which describes how God asked Noah to build the Arc. God (Morgan Freeman) even appears to Evan to clarify. He begins having wood delivered to the house, and pairs of animals begin stalking Evan – jumping into his car with him, and even flying into his window at work – causing quite an embarrassing stir to a senior congressman (John Goodman) who is an anti-enviromentalist trying to get Evan to join his “pack of wolves.” An unstoppable growing beard, reminiscent of a chia pet, is the proverbial straw on the camel’s back, and Evan tells God he will build an arc.

All of this would be fine if someone would just once comment on the flock of animals following his every move or the fact that even when he shaves the hair grows back at the speed of light, because both of these things seem pretty obvious indicators that something fishy is happening. Instead, everyone blames Evan for acting crazy. It’s not as though the animals are invisible – but everyone chooses to ignore them. Unfortunately, this continues through the entire story. As Evan builds the arc, townspeople and reporters crowd around to watch, commenting on how crazy “Heaven’s Evan” is, but not on the fact that the work area is being guarded by lions, or that a giraffe is handing Evan a hammer.

Where the movie excels is in physical comedy, when Evan and his motley crew of lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my!) are building the arc – dropping pieces of wood on toes, hammering fingers, and dancing silly jigs. Unfortunately, when it tries to be meaningful, it fails. I think a big part of its failure is a concerted effort at not offending anyone which, like Evan Baxter’s campaign promise, is a lofty goal.

At its core, Evan Almighty is a treatise on environmentalism. In fact, it is the first comedy to be “carbon zero” – in layman’s terms, it is the first comedy to plant enough trees to offset the carbon emissions it caused. If you go to  the website , you’ll see a link to how you can “Go Zero” or buy a tree for $5. However, watch two minutes of An Inconvenient Truth and you’ll both know more and care more about the environment than if you sit through the entire two hours of this one. I think the reason for this is compromise.

The premise is religious – God coming down and crowning a new Noah – yet they distort the actual biblical meaning of Noah and the Arc too much to appeal to a religious audience. The moral of the story is that we should care about the environment, but aside from a few pretty shots of how the town used to look before there were houses on it, we don’t actually get a clear idea of what we as humans have done to destroy the environment. In trying to make it appealing to young kids, they put too much emphasis on bird poop and cute fuzzy animals at the expense of plot development. And in the end, the movie was just a big pile of disparate goals which failed to form itself into anything cohesive or meaningful.

Still, the movie will have broad appeal to children, who will if nothing else delight in the exotic petting zoo on screen, and there is something to be said for the message of the movie – even if it didn’t quite come through. If even a few kids watch it and say – hey, I’d like to save the zebras – then maybe it was worth the $200 million. But for the rest of you moviegoers, I’d say this is one you can safely skip. Maybe take your $10 you would spend on the movie ticket and buy two trees instead.

If you want to read all about the premiere "expreience" and for more photos (including some "Office" celeb sightings) keep reading!