Genre: comedy

Bruce Almighty

Directed by Tom Shadyac

Written by Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe and Steve Oedekerk

Starring Jim Carrey, Jennifer Aniston, Morgan Freeman

Classification: PG

Rating: **

In Hollywood, where the movie star is God, playing Him on screen can only be considered a demotion. That's just the first troublesome sign for Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty. The second is his devout wish to reunite with director Tom Shadyac, the erstwhile Moses who once led him to the golden land of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Liar Liar. Funny how a single flop, just one, The Majestic, can do that to a career, throwing it into full reverse in the fond hope of recapturing that old cash magic.

Of course, "funny" is precisely the goal of this strategic retreat. Does it get there? Occasionally, which should prove frequently enough to keep the box-office happy. Carrey's legions of fans will surely come and, just as surely, will go away neither entirely disappointed nor fully satisfied. That's because all bets are hedged here. In fact, everything about this picture conspires against the very thing that makes its star, at his best, a comic genius: his capacity for risk, his ability to contort his rubberized self in ways that throw off our emotional balance. The cliché says that the movies' great funny-men -- Chaplin, Keaton -- hint at the tragedy that lurks just beneath the comedy. But Carrey has always hinted at something slightly different and perhaps more contemporary -- the depressive that hides behind the manic.

But not this time, except for one fleeting appearance. Instead, from the script to the title character to the direction, the watchwords here are three: Play it safe. The whole thing reeks of the formulaic, of a carefully packaged bid to propel the star back to his appointed place in the commercial constellation, all the while depriving him of the dark side that got him there in the first place. Even the laughs -- and there definitely are some, especially early on -- feel generic. Carrey provides them, but he's not essential to them -- any old SNL alumnus might have done the same.

The opening frames set down Bruce, not yet Almighty, about as far from heaven as a body can get -- holed up in Buffalo, doing time as the soft-news reporter on the local TV outlet. If there's a giant cookie that threatens to crack the book of Guinness, Bruce is your man on the scene. The guy's good at his job but it's not the one he wants -- his eyes are on the anchorman's chair and some serious credibility. The echoes to Carrey's own plight -- the comic actor craving dramatic legitimacy -- are as obvious as they are ignored. The script plants this seed but doesn't water it, and a potentially neat parallel just withers away.

Anyway, denied his promotion, Bruce has an angry meltdown live on air. That's the fleeting exception, and the picture's brightest moment -- the only time when Carrey really cuts loose, spiking the laughs with a caustic dose of meaness (and, in the process, tapping deep into that swirling undercurrent of public resentment directed at the tube's multitude of boobs). After that, though, both he and the pic are right back in their snug harness -- safe and way too sound.

So Bruce gets fired, whereupon the premise kicks into low gear and never does shift higher. Enter the Deity, a.k.a. Morgan Freeman, dressed in an immaculate white suit that suggests we've been searching for God in all the wrong places -- all this time He's been holed up in Tom Wolfe's closet. Working in His usual mysterious ways, the Lord decides to confer His powers upon our laid-off newsman, while He heads off on an extended leave of absence -- perhaps to pursue a remake of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Bring on Bruce Almighty, which should be Carrey's cue to wreak some comic havoc. No such luck. Rather, we're given the parlour tricks that, thanks to those incessantly aired trailers, half the Western world has already committed to memory. You've seen them: Bruce having some omnipotent fun with the two lap-dogs back in his apartment -- the literal one who pees upright into a toilet; and the curvaceous one who, speaking of boobs, gains a much bigger set. Yes, that's Jennifer Aniston behind the miraculous new mammaries -- another sure casting bet, and a thankless role that Rachel (sorry, Jennifer) handles with far more grace than it deserves.

From there, just before evolving into the sweet fellow we've always known him to be, Bruce exacts a bit of revenge from his newsroom nemesis. That paves the way for another on-air meltdown -- this time in a scene-stealing turn by actor Steve Carrell. Which brings us to troublesome sign #3: When a fellow performer swipes a scene from Jim Carrey Almighty, the picture is out of whack, the universe is out of joint, and the apocalypse is surely nigh.

A postscript, in the form of a tip from a movie-wise colleague. Seems there's a 1936 film called The Man Who Could Work Miracles. Based on an H. G. Wells' story, it boasts a similar premise and, he assures me, is a worthy little antidote to big unworthy vehicles.

I haven't seen it but, in keeping with the theme of retreating back to the safe past in search of cinematic glory, I plan to.