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| Bruce Almighty |
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| How excited (or not) I am to see this movie... |
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When you think of Jim Carrey, sometimes you might think, "What's next?!" Well, it seems that his latest movie, Bruce Almighty, isn't that at all. When Jim Carrey first started his career as a stand-up comedian, he was known for his impressions, his butt jokes, and many more. In Bruce Almighty, leave out a few things and you got someone who can be an actor. Jim also did such that, that I've seen, in the movie, The Majestic. Which centered mainly around his acting skills, which were good. Yet, he truly shines in this movie, using his acting skills, plus his outstanding and hilarious jokes and insults. Starring opposite of such actors, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston, Steven Carrell, Catherine Bell, Lisa Ann Walter, and Philip Baker Hall. Jim does an excellent job at keeping the audience, including the actors themselves, interested, pleased, and having a good time.
The whole movie centers around a guy named Bruce Nolan, a pretty normal guy just trying to get by in Buffalo, New York. He's a whiny TV news reporter whose human-interest stories don't interest him at all. His girlfriend , Grace (Aniston) loves him despite his negative take on the world. He's been dating her for 5 years, and is living with her and her dog named Sam, who isn't house-trained yet. Bruce's normal day is waking up, taking Sam outside to use the bathroom (which Sam started inside on the couch, then Bruce takes him outside while he's still going, but he's already done by the time they're outside), dropping Grace off at the day care center, where she works, and being stuck in traffic, late for work. He works at the local TV network, WKBW-TV. He's unnoticed by everyone at the station, even the sexy news anchor woman, Susan (Bell). It seems he's trying to get the anchor position, since the main anchor is retiring. He's then sent to Niagra Falls for a live story, due to his boss, Jack Keller (Baker Hall) on why Bruce's nemesis, the jerk reporter, Evan Baxter (Carrell), who also wants the position of anchor, gets to do all the live feeds. But, when he loses the anchor position to Evan, right before his live story, he goes enraged with jealousy. Leading to the embarrassment of himself and the station on camera, getting himself fired. Bruce's bad day gets even more dismal when he's jumped by gang members, fights with his girl, then crashes his car.
He tries talking to God about why this happening to him. But, when he doesn't get a reply back from God, he accuses God for everything bad that's happened to him because God isn't doing His job and yells for God to answer him. A few seconds later and his beeper beeps him. The number reads, 717-2323. But, he doesn't call it. The next morning, the beeper goes off once more with the same number, leading Bruce to open a window, and throw it out. The beeper hits a street lamp, lands in the street, and a car runs over it. Then Bruce starts his day. When he sees Sam start his daily routine on the couch, he picks him up once more and leads him outside, which Sam's already done when they get outside once more. Which leads to Bruce questioning why Sam can't do his business outside. Then suddenly, Bruce hears the beeper from the street. Once a car passes by, he retrieves the broken pieces of the beeper from the street and looks to see the same number once more on it. He decides to call the number and gets an answering machine message, saying things like "Are you the kind of person who's lost his job?" And strange enough, "Is your name Bruce? Then we have the job for you!" Then the message tells Bruce about a place for him to go to.
He ends up at a warehouse downtown, where he also ends up messing his pant leg up in a puddle. When he walks into a white roomed warehouse, he finds a sign reading different things, but all for Floor 7. He then meets a janitor (Freeman). The janitor asks him if he'd like to help him mop the floor, and Bruce tells him to take a rain check for the 7th at 7p.m. So Bruce takes the stairs to Floor 7 and meets the same janitor again. Thinking the entire thing is some kind of joke, Bruce decides to leave. But the janitor tells him to wait for the boss, resulting in him shedding his janitor suit, revealing an all white-tuxed God. God then tells Bruce that they should look at the files of everything he's done or ever thought about doing. Bruce sees a filing cabinet and after a second, he opens it, resulting in the cabinet plowing him to the other side of the room, while Bruce's hand is still on the handle. God grabs the last folder in it and then pounds on the top, making the cabinet send Bruce back to were he was. Stunned, Bruce falls over onto the floor. God reads the last entries of Bruce's file, and tells him He's not a fan of blasphemy. So, He makes a deal with Bruce saying, "You think you can do it better, son, here's your chance." He thinks this guy isn't God, so he does some mind games. A few finger counting, and Bruce ends up having two extra fingers for a few seconds (as seen in the trailer), which freaks him out. God tells him when Bruce leaves the building, he'll be endowed with all His powers--or almost all the control. But, Bruce doesn't believe him so he leaves.
What's really cool is that the audience are the first people to realize Bruce's powers are taking effect, not Bruce. The puddle that Bruce stepped into earlier, has had no effect to him at all. He literally walks on the puddle! But, Bruce doesn't notice it. He then starts freaking out some more. He leads himself into thinking, "If that guy's God, I'm Client Eastwood." Which leads to Bruce pulling over to the side of the road because of seeing himself in the rear view mirror as Client Eastwood. What's surprising about this part, is that Jim actually was discovered by Client Eastwood. While Jim was doing the impersonation of him in his stand-up act, Client was there, without Carrey knowing, and thought that it was funny. Bruce then abandons his car and runs into a diner who then orders some coffee and tomato soup. When he gets his coffee, he starts believing what God had told him. So, he experiments with some stuff on the table. He uses his powers to move the sugar and cream to his hands to pour in his coffee and then does some "Parting of the Red Soup", which freaks out an old man eating at the barstool who's witnessing it all. The parting was really funny, but I thought it could've been justified. He then realizes he has the power. Then God appears in the booth with him.
They then are walking and talking, and God reveals he is taking a few days of vacation, so Bruce will be God for a little while (of the Buffalo area mainly). This all in hoping to prove to Bruce, that being God is a tough job, and you entire life is what it takes to be God. Then, everyone notices that Bruce and God are actually standing on the ocean. God leaves saying goodbye to Bruce. So he runs on the water into a downtown street, with the song, "I've Got the Power" playing in the background, as seen in the trailer. He sets off a fire hydrant, blows up a woman's dress as she goes by, and even gets back at the gang that jumped him. When he sees them, he tells them he wants an apology. Before they can jump him again, the leader says, "The day I give you an apology, is when a monkey comes out of my butt" (to put it nicely). And Bruce replies, "Well that day, is today," Leading to an actual monkey coming out of the leader's rear, knocking him out and scaring off all the other gang members. Bruce then starts to leave and the monkey follows, but he tells the monkey to go back, as soon as the leader starts waking up. You can pretty much guess what happens next.
When he gets home, he wants to give Grace a romantic evening. So he ends up going outside on the balcony, and simply manipulates the sky. Pulling the moon closer to Earth, and making stars brighten or die out. They have a romantic evening and then slowly get to the bedroom to, well,... get freaky, leading to a few gags in between before they actually get down to business. Aniston, who truly shows again (after "The Good Girl") that she really will have a movie career, despite the small-minded groups of those who think she should have stayed on television, does an excellent job in this movie. She can play comedy, which is not easy, and she can also keep up with Carrey while not simply mirroring his zaniness and hilarious stupidity, which is really hard to do.
The next morning, the day seems to start off a bit more different than usual. Bruce wakes up with voices in his head, shakes them out by putting his finger in his ear and shaking. And, as we notice, along with Grace, on the TV, it's reported that there was tidal waves in Japan, due to a recent lunar imbalance. Showing that things Bruce is causing to happen, is having dire effects. And the other problem in playing God, as the movie itself demonstrates, is that when God's powers are entrusted into the hands of a human, small problems seem to be valued higher than bigger ones. Consider when Sam starts his routine, Bruce simply says, "Sam!" and points to the bathroom (as seen also in the trailer), leading to the dog actually using the bathroom and putting the seat back down for Grace. Which I thought would be kind of funny still, and from the audiences laughter, I knew it was. And, as the day goes on, Bruce changes his beat up old car, into a brand new hot rod, and decides to get his job back. And, all traffic in his way usually, seems to just pull over willingly to the sides of the street, leaving Bruce free roaming space. Which might work well for Bruce, but not for everyone else; when you're God, you can't just think only about yourself. He ends up going down to a police K-9 kennel. He gets made fun of by the Channel 5 reporter and crew, which leads to Bruce simply laughing and looking at one of the dogs. The dog then ends up digging the ground up, revealing the body of someone which a cop notices. Then the Channel 5 news comes on, revealing Bruce, reporting on that the body the dog had unearthed was Jimmy Hoffa. The entire audience was cracking up, but I had no idea why since I didn't know who he was, 'till my mom told me who he was later on after the show. And also Bruce reports, that the police arrested the crew of Channel 5 because they found 600 pounds of marijuana in their news van, which showed the bags and plants growing from outside of the van. Bruce then goes back to Channel 7 News and gets his job back handed to him on a silver plate by his boss, and everyone at the station, even Susan, starts to notice him. Bruce starts to realize he can't make a very good God, but may indeed make him a better reporter. His career starts to take off, but only because he starts to making things interesting in his news broadcasting. Such as a meteor crashing to earth, and few other things. He even gets revenge on Evan, by completely embarrassing him on camera. He messes with the teleprompter, making him read all sorts of weird things. Also making him, do weird and wacky noises, and speaking in complete gibberish, which is very hilarious.
Meanwhile, Grace is getting a massage with her sister, Debbie (Ann Walter), who really doesn't like Bruce all that much. And we find out, Debbie thinks Bruce is going to propose, because Bruce is taking Grace out to dinner at the same restaurant they went to on their first date. But, when Grace gets a little bit of her hopes up, leading to even Bruce getting on one knee, it turns out the whole dinner was for Bruce to tell Grace that he got the anchor position instead of Evan, and they're holding a party for him at a big house. She gets really disappointed and just almost cries. During that time, Bruce starts hearing the voices again and starts yelling because he can't hear anything Grace is saying to him. He says he has to go to the bathroom so he leaves and actually heads outside. He yells for God's help, resulting in God sending him to Mount Everest to talk. He jokes with Bruce then starts talking to Bruce that the voices are prayers, and if he doesn't answer them, they'll build up in his head. He also tells Bruce that he's only hearing the prays of Buffalo, which makes Bruce and the audience understand the seriousness of how much pray God receives, proving God can only handle that much pressure.
So, later on that night, while Grace is asleep, Bruce starts wondering how he can answer them. So, he puts them in filing cabinets, which fills the room with cabinets. Then, he says for them to be put on sticky notes, which results in the entire interior of the house being covered in sticky notes, including Bruce, Sam, and Grace. Then, he figures it out. He put it into an emailing system on a computer, which the system is called, Yahweh!.com, taking off of the Yahoo!.com theme. So he downloads them, but it seems to take the entire night to download every last one. So, when he wakes up to the chime of download complete, he doesn't want to spend his whole time reading and answering, so he answers, Yes to All. Which leads up the scene at the party. People start admitting to losing weight, winning stocks, and even a lot of people saying they won the lottery, resulting in every person who won getting only at least $17 each. The party gets boring for Bruce since Grace didn't come so he calls her and asks her to come, but she refuses. So Bruce sends Sam to do some work to get her to go, which she does. But meanwhile, Susan meets Bruce in the bedroom he called Grace from and starts to talk about him to make him flattered. Susan leans over and gives him a kiss, while Grace witnesses it and Bruce chases after her. They get in a fight and Grace leaves to Debbie's house 'till she knows what to do. Bruce then sends everyone home, by setting off the fire sprinklers. He asks God for some help, God appears again to him. They have a conversation on how does God make someone love him without affecting free will. God says to him, "When you can figure that out, I'd like to know," then leaves Bruce again. And when Bruce tries to talk to Grace the next day at the day care center, it leads to Grace saying she doesn't love him anymore and Bruce tries to make her love him, but fails.
So when everything starts to go awry for him. He tries to just get through his day as anchor, but fate is beaming in for him. With electricity going off, due to knocked out power lines because of the meteor that hit not to long ago, Bruce simply claps his hands two times, everything turns on, and he goes on with his speech. It goes off again, but he claps once more. Then one of the crew member tells him that there's a riot outside from the angry people that didn't get their money from the lottery. So Bruce starts his speech but realizes he has to go and leaves. He views the riot outside of the station, and is sent to the warehouse again, looking for God. And God says Bruce's right on time, and they start cleaning the floor, since the rain check. After they finish cleaning, God starts telling Bruce that things go bad when you cause things to happen, and answer all prays yes. Which I think is a very good point to make, concerning to prays, that God answers prays he knows you need, not what you want. And also the point being that he should be helping other beside himself. Bruce agrees with Him and goes back home.
The next day, Debbie comes over to get Grace's stuff, before she leaves, she admits to Bruce that Grace prays every night for him. So he checks out the prays she's made, when he sees a pray coming in, he starts to read it then goes to her outside of her window. He sees her crying and praying to God for her to get over him, and he realizes he won't get her back. Bruce then is in his car, decides to help a guy that's stuck with his car that's broken down on the road. Mainly it all leads to Bruce walking along and kneeling in the middle of a highway, crying to God. He ends up thinking God's beaming lights on him, but then we notice that it's actually beam lights from a semi truck. It instantly kills him by knocking him into the street. He then is instantly in the clouds, with God. Bruce first says, "Am I dead?" With God replying, "You can't expect to kneel in the middle of a highway and live to talk about it." Which I thought was pretty funny, along with the audience. So, God talks to him, takes back His powers from Bruce, and asks Bruce to pray. He prays for Grace to be happy with someone who will treat her right and love her. So then God says good, and sends Bruce back.
When Bruce finally wakes up, he finds Grace coming into the room and them both teary eyed, they finally make up. Then the scene goes over to Bruce talking to his boss about taking his old job. He also goes to Evan and tells him that he isn't taking the anchor position and Evan can get it back. Bruce gets the job back, and we see what he's gotten into over the past few days. He's reporting at a local blood drive, where he admitted earlier in the movie that he hates giving blood, and tells us that he and Grace are engaged, and that he's having a great time being with her and less occupied with himself.
For being such a good movie as it is, Carrey sends a good positive message, along with keeping the movie interesting and funny. The point mainly being, no one can do God's job but Him, and a few other great points that were represented in the movie as well. I liked this movie a lot and I give it 5 out of 5 stars for me! Also, whenever Jim Carrey does a movie, he's always got bloopers! But to my dismay the ending didn't exactly end with them, when we started to almost leave they came on. I think they should've done it right after the directed by credit. It would've had more people stay, almost 1/4 of the theater was gone when they started. Oh well. My next review will be coming soon!
Bruce Almighty is rated PG-13 for language, sexual content and some crude humor, and is now playing in most theaters. |
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