Evan Almighty

Evan Almighty is a completely unremarkable movie. I mean, that's about it. There's not much else to say. It's not really “bad,” but neither is it good. It just follows a formula which has been passed down in Hollywood since as far back as I can remember. Well, actually it's a little different since it injects a bit of religion in with the rest of the ingredients.

First thing we're introduced to Evan Baxter, who has just made a step-up in life from being a newscaster to a congressman. You may remember Evan Baxter from the previous film Bruce Almighty, in which Jim Carrey, who had the power of god temporarily, had Evan speaking in tongues on the air. It was slightly funny, in every commercial, and was apparently interesting enough to spawn another movie. Anyways, that's not important. What's important is the character set up here, which isn't too different from the setup of any other character in the film. Evan has just attained personal success, but at a cost of his family (this isn't established very well, but the audience understands it because of the over-use of this tool in the genre). He'd rather read a giant bill than spend time with his kids on a hiking trip like he's promised (once again, I'll state that this is the only notice in the movie that Evan has been neglectful to his family, along with the reaction of one of his children, “just like always.”).

But hey, Evan needs to change his ways, so here's God to intervene. God tells Evan to build an ark, Evan's compliance means abandoning his personal success to connect more with God and his family. It also means a test of his family's faith in each other, which is executed quickly in the movie by a short subplot.

At the end, Evan learns that by putting his family first, he is truly happy. Also, like any other cop-out hollywood movie like this, everything that he's been doing that has put his job in jeopardy has turned out in the end to make him even more successful. The message of the movie is “If you make sacrifices, you'll become happy, and just to make sure everything is still cool, you'll get the things you've sacrificed back.”