Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty: Love Me!
Published June 08, 2003
Didn't anybody working on the movie notice that it was funny only when Bruce was still self-serving and even malicious? The highlights are when Bruce uses his omnipotence to create a perfect evening of sex with Grace (it's Aniston's only good scene, too), and when he makes his rival (Steve Carell) spaz out on air (which made me laugh so hard I couldn't keep both eyes open--Carell actually deserves more credit for this than Carrey). You can only wish that the movie, and Carrey, had had the guts to keep Bruce selfish. The enormity of our petty frustration with life is often weirdly distorted. Oh sure, people are being tortured and slaughtered around the globe, but why can I never find a parking spot?! In our feelings about existence on a day-to-day level we tend to cut the issue down to our size, and there's a beautiful irony in our puniness when we do. We think of God as a manager so incompetent he must be ill-intentioned, like whoever it is that sets up automated phone systems that transfer you to a phone no one answers or a mailbox no one ever responds to, or cut you off.
I can't imagine Carrey in a completely sustained work of irony, however. (What better occasion for one could there have been than a tribute to Andy Kaufman?) Adam Sandler is more likely to go there, though his taste has been even more mongrel than Carrey's. In Bruce Almighty, Carrey the comedian's need to be loved merges with the Hollywood consensus machine and so pushes Bruce's redemption at us, straight. We might be glad if he were a real person we knew but it doesn't do much for him as a character whose adventures are supposed to entertain us. God stipulates that Bruce can't mess with other people's free will; there's a moment when he futilely tries to win Grace back and, looking into the camera, commands, "Love me!" (with the subtext of "Love me even after The Majestic"). Nakedness isn't always a good thing in a movie star. And when Bruce later becomes truly humble and apologizes to his rival, Carrey's face looks more like a rubber mask, more inert, less animated, than it ever has in full prosthetic makeup.
The more respectable form of Carrey's craving for our love is the fact that, as he's stated, he always wanted to be a movie star like James Stewart. At his best, say in Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Stewart balances a concert pianist's delicacy of touch against the masculine stubbornness that enabled him to rise out of the handsome-juvenile category. It's as hard to imagine Carrey developing Stewart's sensitivity of technique as it is to imagine Stewart making me weep with laughter as Carrey has done. Carrey handled his sweet side best in The Mask (1994) by segregating it from the demonic clown, who was thereby unfettered. (He did the same thing less effectively in Liar Liar (1997) and Me, Myself & Irene (2000).) The Mask is as much a Jekyll-and-Hyde story as Lewis's Nutty Professor only better because the Mask character never has to apologize. The way Hollywood makes movies, the Devil is always going to be funnier than God. I wish Jim Carrey would be as content with his staggering gifts as Bruce is supposed to be with his paltry ones.
- Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty: Love Me!
- Published: June 08, 2003
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- Section: Video
- Filed Under: Video: Comedy
- Writer: Alan Dale
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Alan - thanks for the review. I will see this movie, but I've noticed that most comedies seem to suffer from the same problem you describe here - they've got to have a character arc. So Carrey is funny, but then he learns his lession. Funniness over.
But what would happen if he didn't learn his lession? WOuldn't it be ultimately dissatisfying, even if the funny didn't stop?
I think the point is that there's a disjunction b/w the self-absorbed jerk Carrey plays at the beginning of Bruce Almighty and the beatified guy he plays at the end. Carrey isn't the kind of low-keyed actor who can make the transition subtly (Adam Sandler is way ahead of him there), which is a big reason the soft comic realism of the ending is cloying. Jim Carrey going about selflessly spreading the good word is not Jim Carrey doing what he has any talent for. And the lesson he's learning is tripe: value your faithful girlfriend; give blood; make people laugh. If this is all you'd get from face-to-face meetings with God then it hardly matters whether He exists. He's dead even if He's alive. And think about it: the movie actually includes God as a character and while talking to him the hero doesn't even get past his job woes, and we're still supposed to identify with him. Wouldn't you want to ask Him what He was thinking about when He set the Holocaust in motion, or Stalinism, or when He created the bubonic plague or cancer or birth deformities, or SOMEthing?
They would have done better either to make Bruce a nice boy like Harold Lloyd who we felt would deserve better if only he would grow up, which in form would be a romantic-comic melodrama with the anchorman as the villain--and a total waste of Carrey's hardball talent, or to make it a total work of irony in which Bruce never understood the lesson, and let Carrey go to the end of the line with the character. If it were a work of sustained irony the audience could identify with Bruce BECAUSE he's unworthy of God's direct intercession. We all are on the average day when we aren't aware of anyone noticing what we do. We're filled with anger and self-pity b/c everything doesn't go our way and for that very reason we withhold from other people--what we have was too hard to come by! The audience would get the lesson even if Bruce didn't and then the moviemakers wouldn't have to spell it out, which they don't have the imagination or guts to do in a compelling way, anyway. As I recall this is how the Woody Harrelson strand of White Men Can't Jump finishes off, with Rosie Perez walking away from him in disbelief b/c he just CAN'T grow up. It's emotional but in a tart realistic way you can respond to and still respect yourself. Responding to Bruce Almighty would be like eating an entire pound of cheap candy you didn't even want at one sitting.
Thanks for reading.
True that, I see your point now. I'll catch the film anyway, but I'll prepare myself for the let-down "Hollywood" ending. Thanks for the warning. :)
I thought Bruce Almighty was a wonderful movie. Morgan Freman Played a wonderful God also.the movie made you think, however it also made me Laugh.I am troubled about a few coments I read from other people who posted coments.I am a firm Believer in God and am a christian,God didnt Create the plauge or any other Horible sickness.those things come from satin himself.I dont Believe for a second that God would want us to be sick, homeless or unhappy. he gave us free will.he wants us to serve Him Because we love Him. it is not a forced issue
Isn't it amazing that the greatest comedians of today come from Canada - especially Toronto. Jim Carey, John Candy, Mike Myers (aka Steve Austin), Eugene Levy, Thomas Chong, Howie Mandel, Rick Moranis, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, etc., etc. And this doesn't even take into account the disproportionate number of Canadian actors and singers that own Hollywood. And for that matter Hollywood was created by some Jewish guys from Nova Scotia, and most of the films today are made in Toronto or Vancouver. Oh Canada...
John Ritter was another good physical comedian. Check out the first season of Three's Company.
Erratum: Mike Myers (aka Austin Powers). Oh.. did I mention the vast number of Canadian Pro Wrestlers?
jim r u there?if u r than my name is gabby.i think i'm your #1 fan please,please,please,please call me at [edited] util then tell celibrities about me.and 1 more thing please hire me at 1 of your movies your my inspiration like jerry lewis is 2
u.please try and call me.
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I just recently saw Bruse almighty. What a wonderful performance Carrey gave us yet again. With every movie he just gets amazingly better. He is full of surprises. He can be stupendously funny and yet insanely sensitive. I can't wait to see what he does next.