Worse Than The Rockies!

Hello! With the Rockies in the midst of another losing skid (swept by the Royals, yay!!), I think it's a good time to fulfill my threat for another Worse Than the Rockies Movie Review! Yes, there are things on TV that will make you cringe even more than when you see Willy Taveras striding to the plate with the tying run at third, or when any Rockies reliever approaches the mound immediately after the Rox just scored three runs to get right back in the game.

Worse Than the Rockies: Evan Almighty

Evan Almighty is the touching story of how a guy who was not famous had some funny scenes in a movie, and in true Hollywood fashion, when it was time to make a sequel, he was famous, and so they made him the star of the sequel!

No, wait. That's not the story, at all. But Evan Almighty is the sequel to Bruce Almighty, a huge hit that managed to pull off the tricky combination of dealing with religious topics and being reasonably funny. But since Jim Carrey, the star of Bruce Almighty, declined to take part in the sequel, they decided to take Steve Carell's bit part from that film (Evan, the obnoxious news guy who starts speaking in tongues on-air) and make him the star of the sequel. Ideas like this, folks, are what makes Hollywood the special, incredible place it is!!

Evan Baxter, once a snivelling jerk who undermined his colleague to gain his job as a news-anchor, has -- through the magic of one of Hollywood's finest special effects departments -- become Evan Baxter, a really nice, sweet family man who has just been elected to the US Congress. Evan really wants to make a difference! However, he clearly does not give a shit about the environment (the bastard!) because he hates animals, drives a Hummer, and selects kitchen cabinets for their appearance rather than considering the poor, nearly extinct trees they were made from. In the first ten minutes of the film, he is shown to his nice, big office; meets a Congressman played by John Goodman who seems really, really nice; and moves into his nice, big new house with a huge vacant lot right next door and a great view of the brand-spanking new dam only a few miles away. So things are really rocking for Evan.

Then, funny things start to happen. Not ha-ha funny, mind you, but we'll get to that later. Funny as in odd, out of the ordinary, unexpected... except if you have even half a brain in your head and you've seen one ad for this film, you have already figured out the ending and you've probably imagined 85% of the scenes leading up to it with startling accuracy. But as I was saying, odd things start to happen: Evan sees the letters GEN and the numbers 6 and 14 everywhere, like on his alarm clock and his new license plates. Digital animals seem to follow Evan wherever he goes. Piles of wood and old-looking tools start showing up at his home, and he didn't even order them! He finds that, just like Homer Simpson, his beard grows so quickly that he can't shave it off. Evan looks up Genesis 6:14 in the Bible, and sees that it's the passage where God tells Noah to build an ark. And just in case that didn't convince Evan to build an Ark, God shows up and tells Evan to build an ark, because a flood is coming. A flood of laughs!!!

God is once again played by Morgan Freeman, who is one of a handful of actors you could approach and say "just act sort of, you know, Godish" and he could pull it off. Assuming here that you picture God as a somewhat smarmy know-it-all with a fondness for awful puns (his nametag reads "Al Mighty") who avoids answering every question by asking another question. Of course, Evan listens to a guy like Morgan Freeman, and starts building an ark in the big vacant lot across from his home. His three sons, who have felt neglected by Evan as he struggled with his first weeks in Congress, are excited to spend time with their dad, even if he is going insane.

Evan tries to juggle his ark building with his job as a Congressman, but he soon gets suspended from Congress right as he's about to co-sponsor John Goodman's rape-nature bill. Even though Evan shows up for work in a suit, he blinks and he's suddenly standing in the middle of Congress wearing some sort of Bible clothes and surrounded by animals. Naturally, finding himself wearing Bible clothes causes Evan to just go ahead and tell everybody that God told him to build an ark because a flood is coming on such-and-such a date. Rather than being dumbfounded that a guy can instantly change his clothes on live TV and in full view of 300 people and then attract hundreds of wild animals into the US Capitol building, John Goodman suspends Evan from Congress for the dual infractions of mentioning God and having un-Congressmanly grooming habits. And then his wife takes the kids and leaves. So things are really sucking for Evan.

But even after losing his sanity, his family, his job, and his baby-bottom-smooth face, he's still much better off than the poor folks who suffered through this litter-box of ideas posing as a movie. Evan Almighty must be the least funny comedy of all time. I watched this entire movie and did not laugh once. Not even a chuckle. This film is about as funny as an exploding truck full of dirty diapers. Actually, that's a helluva lot funnier than this film, mainly because I'm imagining cars hitting big piles of unexpected diapers in the road and skidding everywhere in slow motion. That scene will probably be in the next Michael Bay flick, but I digress.

This movie thinks that an extreme close-up of a guy shaving his nostrils is funny. This movie thinks that animals crapping everywhere is funny. This movie thinks that growing a beard at an incredible rate and then hiding it from everybody behind various items is funny. This movie thinks that about 20 scenes of Evan freaking out as he notices yet another bunch of animals mysteriously attracted to him is funny. This movie thinks that lions and gazelles working together to build things is funny. This movie thinks that Wanda Sykes is funny. Oh my lord, is this an unfunny movie.

There are those movies that are so bad that they are actually immensely watchable. Battlefield Earth, for instance: a classic example of a movie that did absolutely everything either a) wrong or b) just plain stupid, yet somehow, in its failure lies great entertainment value. This, I am sorry to report, is NOT the case with Evan Almighty. This is a film that shows just how stupid Hollywood thinks its audience really is; it is insultingly bad. Getting back to the story for an example, early in the film, Evan is reading about Noah, and he learns that Noah, his wife, and his three sons built the ark together. The film obviously wants us to realize at this moment, "WOW! Noah had a wife and three sons, and so does Evan!!!" and to just be blown away. Who's actually going to fall for that? Anyone? Seriously, how was this film in theaters for more than about half a day?

The film continues in this predictable, stupid fashion to its predictable, stupid conclusion. The family returns and helps Evan build the ark. Digital animals help too! Fat and ugly people gather to make fun of Evan, but he responds with patience and wisdom now that his beard's all white. The day of the flood arrives, and after a false start or two, there's a flood right as the timer reaches 0:00, and Evan and his ark save all the people who were mean to him. The ark then travels through the streets of Washington DC and stops right at John Goodman's feet, where Evan steps from the front of the ark and announces "This time, it's personal!" and blows John Goodman away with a shotgun from under his Bible robe. There is a parade and Queen Amidala gives Evan a glowing orb, and he holds it above his head and all the digital animals cheer under a pretty rainbow.

OK, clearly I made some of that up... but not nearly as much as you might think. This butt of a film is easily Worse Than the Rockies. It gets a score of 3.5 Dingers out of 4. Its only redeeming quality was that it was mercifully short, clocking in at a brisk 90 minutes, which leaves you plenty of time to flip back to the Rockies game in time to catch Helton popping up weakly to shallow left field. Another 15 minutes, though, and it would have been eligible for the perfectly awful 4 Dinger score.

Until next time, Go Rockies!!!