Evan Almighty : DVD Review




Director: Tom Shadyac
Starring: Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman
Running: 91 minutes
Released: 21/03/11

Evan Almighty (2007) is the kind-of-sort-of sequel to Bruce Almighty that starred Jim Carrey. Bruce Almighty (2003) was a fresh film with some good ideas and the likeability of Carrey at the forefront of its marketing campaign. It has a budget of $81M and it made a staggering $484M at the box-office.

Evan Almighty on the other hand with its frankly ludicrous budget of $200M would have been very lucky to make a profit. Unsurprisingly it fell about $25M short. Would it have made a profit if Jim Carrey had reprised his role from the original film? Yes of course it would. America loves Jim Carrey (and so do I – he’s a fantastic actor). And America also loves Steve Carell… at least they do now… back in 2007 however he was only just becoming the huge star that he is now, even taking into consideration The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005).

Anyway Evan Almighty simply isn’t a good as Bruce Almighty. The shine was off the apple already – it’d been done before and now we have Carell sort-of-replacing Carrey. Yes it was slightly different. But it was still basically the same idea and what’s more with Evan Almighty you have the addition of a slightly odd and rather boring sub-plot of the fact that Evan is a congressman… can you think of anything more boring?

Carell is loveable as Evan and Morgan Freeman reprises his role as God – is there anyone better to depict God? Definitely not. Tom Shadyac’s direction is adept as ever and the story isn’t bad – it’s funny and it’s bright and breezy for the most part but it’s never going to match up to Bruce Almighty. And I suppose it shouldn’t have it. Taken as a film in its own right it’s enjoyable hokum, even if there is a genuine religious message… that will nevertheless be missed by 90% of the audience.

The Blu-ray quality image is an improvement over the DVD, but not by leaps and bounds. I can recommend this film but Carell has been in better things since.

Author : Kevin Stanley