Evan Almighty turns a simple premise into a long, loud mess. Steve Carell plays Evan Baxter, a mild-mannered congressman who finds himself tasked with building a giant ark to save animals from a flood. The setup sounds clever. The execution runs out of steam fast.
The movie starts with promise. Carell plays Evan as a man of faith who takes his calling seriously, even when his coworkers think he is losing his grip. He gets a message from God telling him to build an ark, and he follows it without question. That commitment earns some genuine laughs early on. The problem is that the film does not know what to do with that premise once it is set up.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
From Humor to Mockery
The tone shifts quickly from gentle satire to broad mockery. Early scenes play the idea straight, letting Carell sell Evan’s sincerity. Later scenes pile on the jokes about creationists and literalists. The shift feels abrupt, and it breaks the rhythm of the whole film.
Carell carries the weight alone for most of the running time. His physical comedy is sharp, and his timing holds up even when the material around him weakens. But he cannot sustain the film on his own. The supporting cast, including Jennifer Aniston as Evan’s wife and Morgan Freeman as God, mostly shows up to fill space between gags.
The Animals Take Over
The ark itself becomes a problem. The film spends a large portion of its runtime showing animals getting loaded onto the vessel. Goats butt heads, lions stare down tigers, and a sloth moves at a pace that defies physics. These scenes are funny in brief moments but wear thin over ten minutes.
The film leans heavily on these animal sequences, treating them as the main event instead of a device to drive the story forward. This is a film that could have been a tight, character-driven comedy about faith and responsibility, but it chooses to become a vehicle for slapstick involving goats.
God as a Side Character
Freeman’s God is meant to be a wise, grandfatherly presence. Instead, he often comes across as a plot device rather than a fully realized character. His lines are delivered with warmth, but the film rarely lets him do much beyond delivering exposition or offering advice.
The relationship between Evan and God is supposed to be the emotional core of the story. It never quite gets there. The film treats God as a comic foil more than a meaningful force in Evan’s life.
Where the Comedy Misses
The film tries to balance faith, family, and disaster comedy, and none of those threads land with real force. Family drama is a weak subplot. Disaster comedy is a missed opportunity. Faith is treated as a joke rather than a theme.
None of it clicks together. The result is a film that feels like three separate movies stitched together without a seam.
The Running Time Problem
At nearly two hours, the film drags in stretches. The ark-building scenes are slow, and the animal sequences repeat their jokes without finding new angles. The pacing suffers most in the second half, where the film loses focus entirely.
Some of the slow middle sections feel like padding. They add nothing to the story and only extend the runtime. The film would have been better off cutting twenty minutes.
What Works
The film is not without its moments. Carell’s performance remains strong throughout, and his commitment to playing Evan straight even when the script goes silly is admirable. The animal sequences, while excessive, do offer a few genuinely funny moments. And the film’s attempts at heartstring-tugging payoffs, though predictable, are sincere enough to earn a smile.
- Steve Carell’s commitment to playing Evan straight
- A few genuinely funny animal sequences
- Sincere, if predictable, attempts at emotion
- Jennifer Aniston’s chemistry with Carell
What Does Not Work
The film’s biggest failure is its inability to hold a consistent tone. It begins as a character study, drifts into broad farce, and ends as a disaster comedy with a religious punchline. None of these tones are bad on their own, but stacked one after another they cancel each other out.
The animal sequences, which could have been a clever commentary on the story of Noah, instead become a distraction. The ark itself becomes a prop for jokes rather than a symbol of faith.
A Mixed Legacy
Evan Almighty was not a box-office disaster, but it did not leave much of a mark either. It is remembered as a middling entry in Carell’s filmography, a film that tried to do too much and ended up doing none of it well. It is the kind of movie that gets rented on a slow night and forgotten the next day.
The film’s reputation is fair. It is not a terrible movie, but it is not a good one either.
The Final Word
Evan Almighty is a film with a promising premise and a disappointing execution. Carell’s performance keeps it from sinking entirely, but the script, pacing, and tonal confusion hold it back. It is a mixed bag that never quite coheres into a satisfying whole.
The film’s best moments are scattered and few. Its worst moments are frequent and exhausting. Taken as a whole, it is a film that falls short of its potential.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
