Pun Salad

No, I haven't seen Spider-Man 3 yet. Nor have I seen Shrek 3, or Pirates 3. Not even Die Hard 4. Noooo. Instead I go see Bruce Almighty 2, actual title being Evan Almighty, because both Jim Carrey and Jennifer Aniston decided to do other things. So minor character Evan Baxter, played by Steve Carell in the previous movie, steps up to play out the seemingly random choice by God (reprised by Morgan Freeman) to build an ark and change the world.

Let me get the negative stuff out of the way first: the first thirty minutes or so of this movie are laugh-free. The slimy-politician-rapes-the-environment-for-mere-profit plot driver is beyond cliché. It is every little bit as sappily sentimental as you can imagine.

But speaking of imagination: try imagining the number of animal-poop jokes that one movie could possibly hold.

This movie has twice that number of animal-poop jokes. And, just to mix things up a bit, there's an alpaca-spit joke near the end. Ho!

But, in spite of myself, I had a decent time. Because (a) I can really believe that Morgan Freeman is God, even if he's much more of a touchy-feely type God than the actual Old Testament guy; (b) Steve Carell can (eventually) make any old crap funny if he tries; (c) Wanda Sykes is funny even when she's not trying; (d) animals are cute; (e) I suspended disbelief, and found myself saying: yeah, if God decided to redo the Noah story, it probably would go something like that.

So I can't recommend it, but if the family consensus is to go, you won't have a bad time.