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Crappy New Comedies from Good Ol' Comedians

Cinema Reviews - Uploaded July 16, 2003
 

Bruce Almighty
**

Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12A. USA. 101 minutes. Directed by Tom Shadyac. Produced by Michael Bostick, James D. Brubaker, Jim Carrey, Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe, Tom Shadyac. Written by Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe, Steve Oodekerk; from a story by Koren, O'Keefe. Starring Jim Carrey, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Baker Hall, Catherine Bell, Lisa Ann Walter, Steven Carell, Nora Dunn.
 

Daddy Day Care
*1/2

Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG. USA. 92 minutes. Directed by Steve Carr. Produced by Matt Berenson, John Davis, Wyck Godfrey. Written by Geoff Rodkey. Starring Eddie Murphy, Jeff Garlin, Steve Zahn, Regina King, Anjelica Huston, Kevin Nealon, Jonathan Katz, Siobahn Fallon Hogan.

Relentlessly looking to the positive is not something that's easy to do when considering the career of Eddie Murphy, but because I love him, I feel obliged to do so. In the face of a movie like "Daddy Day Care", you should not focus your attention on the fact that it's a piece of crap, but reflect that Eddie is a guy who seems to work his way to hitting bottom before making great comebacks. Sit out releases like this by silently chanting to yourself, it'll only make him wise up and give us a good movie, it'll only make him wise up and give us a good movie, it'll only make him wise up and give us a freakin' good movie.

This one is a family comedy with the set-up of "Mr. Mom", the hijinks of "Kindergarten Cop" and the all the filmmaking skill of "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles". It looks sort of grim (presumably it was shot on digital), and it moves with such turgid lack of energy that I found myself wincing, trying to smooth over the rhythm with my imagination. Eddie, Jeff Garlin and Steve Zahn find themselves laid off from an evil advertising agency, and they can't afford to send their kids to an evil prep school any more, and so they start their own day-care centre.

Oh, but they're not prepared for taking care of kids in their own home, so the little tykes run riot over them, and the men have to learn the value of paying close attention and taking responsibility. One of the reasons the movie isn't funny is that the adventures of the kids really aren't that wild; they make too much noise, eat too much candy, and don't seem spontaneous through any of it. The adults sit around having sensible and shallow conversations about how poorly they've been doing as fathers. "Daddy Day Care" is too lifeless for kids, too thin for adults, and doesn't have any opportunities for Murphy to go crazy and start mouthing off -- he's supposed to be subdued this time, so we can sit around warm-hearted and muse on how much he has matured. What's the point?
 

Jim Carrey is doing a little better, but not much, in another corporate comedy that was made through cynicism and formula but pretends to teach us valuable lessons. In "Bruce Almighty" he plays not a day care novice but a TV news reporter, ambitious and self-centred, who despairs so much at his lack of career advancement that he crashes his car into a tree and starts cursing the sky. And so our Lord (played with graceful, authoritative wit by Morgan Freeman) comes down to Earth and says, hey, I'm taking a vacation, you can have all my powers, and see how you like it.

Now, maybe it's me, but I would think that God has more patience than to take action as drastic as this at the sight of one guy shaking his first in the air. The movie, however, is in a hurry to show Jim Carrey goin' all crazy with his superpowers, and doesn't have the energy to give us a credible premise. And again, maybe it's me, but meeting God and being endowed with his powers would probably throw your day off course a little, make you search your soul, get you shaken up and have you wondering how to use them mighty forces. One might want to repair the hole in the ozone layer, render nuclear weapons useless or figure out a way of confirming the existence of the holy in some irrefutable worldwide form. Carrey just starts dancing about the place, parts his red soup, makes his wife's tits bigger, gets a bunch of innocent people thrown in jail for a quantity of marijuana that would probably get you more than one life sentence, and has his rival at the news station fired.

Some of this is amusing just through Carrey's energy; most of it is a desperate excuse for him to delight in supernatural gifts while making funny faces. When we get to the ending, where Carrey realises he should have been somewhat more selfless, there are a couple of speeches that got to me; I'm a sucker for moral lessons, especially when the voice of our creator is talking. But the movie is a slimy faker, and we know we're being toyed with. How smart would anyone have to be to realise that getting your enemies in trouble, making fire hydrants explode and playing with your lunch is not the wisest way to use the abilities of the divine?

COPYRIGHT© 2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani

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