Evan Baxter was a Buffalo TV news reporter with a loud suit and a louder mouth. In “Evan Almighty,” he gets elected to Congress, moves his family to Prestige Crest in Huntsville, Virginia, and promises to change the world. Then God shows up and asks him to build a boat.
That is the premise, and it is a good one. A junior congressman in a gated development, eight vacant lots purchased in his name, ancient tools and gopher wood delivered to his door, pairs of animals trailing him through the Capitol. The pieces are all there. The film just never figures out what to do with them.
“Evan Almighty” runs 96 minutes. Tom Shadyac directed it, Steve Oedekerk wrote it with Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow, and Universal Pictures released it in the United States on June 22, 2007, after a premiere at Universal CityWalk on June 10. It is a spin-off and sequel to “Bruce Almighty” (2003), with Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman returning as Evan Baxter and God. It scores 5.6 out of 10.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
The Number 614
The mechanism is the best thing in the movie. Strange events pile up around Evan: eight vacant lots bought under his name, tools and gopher wood he did not order, a man claiming to be God appearing wherever he goes, animals following him, birds coming through his office window, hair and beard growing back no matter how often he shaves. And the number 614, turning up in his daily routines until he works out what it means.
It refers to verse 14 of chapter 6 of the Book of Genesis, where God tells Noah to build an ark ahead of a coming flood. That is a clean, patient piece of construction, and the film is smart to let Evan get there himself.
Then God appears and asks him to build the ark. Evan hesitates, then starts. The vacant lots become a shipyard. His sons get pulled into the work, which gives him time with them he had been losing to the job. Joan, his wife, reads the whole thing as a midlife crisis. That tension is the real story the film keeps stepping away from.
Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman
Carell carries the movie. He plays Evan’s vanity and his growing confusion without winking at either, and the physical comedy of a congressman with a beard he cannot shave is the film’s most reliable engine. Freeman plays God the way he did in “Bruce Almighty” — calm, unhurried, faintly amused — and the part suits him. He does not need to raise his voice to sell a flood.
Lauren Graham plays Joan, and the script gives her the harder job: she has to be the skeptic without being the villain, and she manages it. John Goodman plays Congressman Chuck Long, Evan’s boss, who wants him to co-sponsor the Citizens’ Integration of Public Lands Act. Wanda Sykes plays Rita, John Michael Higgins plays Marty, Jonah Hill plays Eugene, Molly Shannon plays Eve Adams. Jimmy Bennett, Graham Phillips and Johnny Simmons play the three Baxter sons. Harve Presnell plays Congressman Burrows.
The cast is deep. The problem is that most of them are standing around waiting for the animals.
A Budget the Movie Cannot Hide
Production began in January 2006. Several visual effects companies worked on the CGI for the animals and the climactic tsunami. By the time production wrapped, “Evan Almighty” had become the most expensive comedy film ever made — a record later taken by “Men in Black 3.”
You can feel that money on screen, and not always in a good way. The animal work is abundant, which is not the same as funny. A gag about pairs of creatures following a man around is worth one scene. The film keeps returning to the well, and the returns shrink each time.
The flood itself arrives late and has to carry a lot of weight. It is staged as spectacle, and spectacle is the one thing this movie can deliver without argument. But spectacle does not resolve a story about a man choosing between his family and his career. It only interrupts it.
What Happened to Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey declined to reprise his role from “Bruce Almighty.” He has said he is “not a big fan of doing the same character twice.” That decision shaped this film more than any other single choice, because it forced the sequel to rebuild around a supporting character instead of its star.
This was the second time a sequel was made to a film Carrey declined to return for. The other was “Son of the Mask.”
That is not a knock on Carell, who is more than capable of anchoring a comedy. It is a note on what kind of movie this became: a spin-off wearing a sequel’s clothes, inheriting a premise it did not design and a title it did not earn.
The Schedule Evan Baxter Never Asked For
| Day | What arrives |
|---|---|
| First day in Congress | Introduces himself to staffers; offered CINPLAN co-sponsorship by Congressman Long |
| Following days | Eight vacant lots bought in his name; tools and gopher wood delivered; God appears; animals follow him; hair and beard grow back |
| Recurring | The number 614 appears in his daily routines |
| After the realization | Evan begins building the ark on the vacant lots with his sons |
| During construction | His changing appearance alienates his congressional staffers |
| Joan’s read | A midlife crisis |
The table is the movie’s spine, and it is a decent one. Each beat escalates. Each beat is legible. The trouble is what the film does between the beats, which is mostly repeat them.
Where the Movie Loses Its Nerve
“Evan Almighty” wants to be a family comedy about a man who gets a second chance at being a father. It also wants to be a satire of Washington. It also wants to be an effects-driven retelling of Noah’s Ark. It cannot be all three in 96 minutes, and it does not choose.
The congressional thread is the weakest. Evan’s staffers turn on him because of how he looks, and the film treats that as a complication rather than a subject. The Citizens’ Integration of Public Lands Act is a prop. The satire has no teeth and no target it is willing to name.
The family thread is the strongest and gets the least room. Evan building the ark with his sons is the only stretch where the movie’s size and its sentiment point the same direction. Joan’s skepticism is set up well and resolved too quickly.
And the faith element, which could have been the film’s whole reason for existing, stays decorative. God is a plot device here, not a character with an argument. He shows up, he assigns the task, he watches. Freeman makes that watchable. He cannot make it mean anything.
What the Money Bought
“Evan Almighty” is not a disaster. It is a waste. The premise is strong, the cast is overqualified, the effects budget is visible in every frame, and the result is a movie that never decides what it is about. It was the most expensive comedy ever made at the time, and it spends that money on animals instead of on the one thing it had for free: a man who has to choose.
Against “Bruce Almighty,” it suffers. That film had a star at the center of a premise built for him. This one has a good actor at the center of a premise built for someone else, and it shows in every scene where Evan is alone with his doubts and the movie cuts away to a giraffe.
Against the rest of 2007’s comedy slate, it is forgettable rather than offensive. It will not make you angry. It will make you check the runtime.
The number that matters here is not 614. It is 5.6, and that is the right score. There is a version of “Evan Almighty” that works — a smaller, sharper one about a congressman who builds a boat and loses his job for it. This is not that version. This is the version with the tsunami.
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