Bruce Almighty: A Post-9/11 Reflection on American Greatness
Without any explosions or conspiracies, “Bruce Almighty” emerges as another American response to the events of 9/11, signifying nothing less than a moral victory. Just as the classic comedy “It’s a Wonderful Life,” featuring an angel meeting the unemployed James Stewart, was released after the victory in World War II. While Jim Carrey doesn’t exactly emulate Stewart’s demeanor, the plot is similar: a desire to live after not wanting to, reflecting America’s inability to sleep without a sense of its own greatness. However, even a superficial comparison of these two Hollywood appeals to God, separated by sixty years, doesn’t favor contemporary Americans.
In principle, “Bruce Almighty” is harmless and inoffensive, and someone was constantly giggling behind me at the premiere. Admittedly, different people giggled at different scenes, but apparently, that’s the basis for a $240 million box office in the film’s home country alone. The film draws from the writers’ eternally inexhaustible trove of humor, such as television backstage antics (see “The Truman Show”), urinating dogs (see “Ace Ventura”), and excretions and perversions (“Liar Liar”). Jim Carrey has long mastered these elements individually, and this time he combines them. Unfortunately, the combination isn’t very successful for any agnostic or atheist whose history doesn’t begin 200 years ago with the Declaration of Independence, but at least 2000 years earlier with the crucifixion of Christ, not to mention the creation of the world.
Bruce Nolan has a lovely girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston), an apartment, a dog, a car, a job, but it’s not enough for him. He’s dissatisfied with his job and does everything to lose it. He hates his dog, wrecks his car, is rude to his girlfriend, and blames God for it all, bless his name. God (Morgan Freeman) personally meets with Bruce and, instead of giving him a piece of his mind, suddenly relinquishes his duties. He goes on vacation. It’s clear that when going on vacation, you shouldn’t put either the most miserable (they don’t care) or the happiest (they also don’t care) in your place. But why put average people like Bruce in charge, as if they care any less? When leaving, you should leave completely – they can manage during the vacation, as they have for centuries.
However, God’s actions are consistently absurd, purely for demonstrative purposes. First, to demonstrate how a tailored white suit looks fantastic on Morgan Freeman under his work clothes. Then, to demonstrate special effects: how a drawer in a narrow cabinet can extend for a kilometer and how one can walk on water as if on dry land. Finally, to demonstrate the exotic scenery missing from the plot, namely the summit of Mount Everest. In essence, the only result of God’s providence is for Carrey to mop the floors on the seventh at seven in the evening, and it’s unclear where. If only it were at home. In short, only the mopping has an educational, not a special, effect.
From Bruce Nolan’s perspective, the need for God is also minimal. His ultimate dreams are a fancy car, larger breasts for his girlfriend, career advancement, and for his dog not to pee on the carpet. He doesn’t even need a lot of money – he wouldn’t know what to do with it. Just a few perks, to be “like everyone else,” only a little better. Envious eyes, indeed. And all the prayers of “people” are perfectly in line with this. To win the lottery. A fight broke out in the city when, at Bruce’s command, everyone won the lottery, each receiving $17. Indeed, you can’t buy a fancier car than your neighbor’s with that. You can’t even enlarge your wife’s breasts. So what is there to boast about?
The Unnecessary Divinity
In the end, it’s utterly incomprehensible why God was brought into the picture when a magic wand would have sufficed for petty vanity. Or, at most, a golden fish. Well, they would have eaten it. But even all the more or less acceptable jokes in the movie were invented by Bruce himself, without divine intervention. He quipped about the cinematic tropes of American “people,” like Catherine Hepburn falling directly into the artist’s hands at Niagara from “Titanic.” He carried the rug out with the dog so that it would pee on the grass while looking at him. And when all this ends, there aren’t even any funny questions for God. There’s only one question: why did a monkey emerge from the backside of a street urchin as a sign of the previously beaten Bruce’s omnipotence? The laughter here is beyond the pale – then it climbed back in. But why a monkey? Why not a boa constrictor, an elephant, or a pterodactyl egg?
A Disconnected Narrative
It’s clear that people have become shallow. Only due to the complete lack of any connection with God is the connection between episodes in “Bruce Almighty” also extremely uneven, with loose ends sticking out: as if an aging Carrey is indeed piecing together old news from other people’s “Kindergarten Cop,” “Bedazzled,” his own “The Mask,” “Man on the Moon,” and so on and so forth.