The world's most bizarre love story First off, this wasn't necessarily a bad way to kill an evening, and if you want some mostly-clean family entertainment, you could do worse. And it's a lot friendlier as Christian viewing than, say, The Passion of the Christ and it's two hour gore fest.
But, for a movie with God as a main character, I found that the divine intervention aspect was the least improbable part of this film. Far closer to the front of my mind were things like: Do they really think the capital looks like that? Are the filmmakers aware that we possess a bicameral legislative branch, a debate process over the passage of bills, a requirement that bills pass both houses and also pass the approval of the president, and, oh, I dunno, more than one frickin' Congressman that makes all the decisions? I realize Hollywood rarely is a stickler for details, but much of the film hinged on stopping one bill from getting passed by a random Congressman, one that would actually sell national park space to private development. What alternate universe is this movie taking place in where Congress would not be besieged by protests and clear legal hurdles? Also, what alternate universe is one mere Congressman of undetermined status is given the power to suspend Congressman, control the entire D.C. police force, and apparently build dams and dictate their construction himself with absolutely no oversight for personal profit? And aside from the bad politics, what of the hackneyed theology? At one point, God tells Evan that the story of Noah's ark was a love story because all the animals came in pairs. Not, say, for the repopulation of the Earth after a vengeful deity drowned every living thing on the planet. Strangely, Evan Almighty skips over this theme when it's the most prominent theme of the story it is trying to reference. There might have been a really witty, thoughtful film if Evan had ever questioned anything and had some deep dialogs with God. But Hollywood isn't out to make thoughtful films with God, they just want to rope in church goers, so the best we get is God declaring ARK as an anagram, ruining a man's life, flooding an entire housing development for no apparent reason, having birds poop on everything in sight, and smirking the entire way.
The movie is also pretty dead set on sticking to clichés. This movie will never surprise you. There's even a clichéd "Wife loses faith in husband" subplot, which would require an incredibly stupid woman in the first place because she's been around her husband for weeks of him being chased by all sorts of exotic animals and watching his uncontrollable hair growth. There's also the normal "Working person ignores his family and just needs to be shown what matters in life" cliché, which apparently translates to "Construction projects bring families together! Also, natural disasters." Yes, I'm paying attention to things like this because the movie isn't exactly throwing anything else at me to make up for it. Steve Carrel is himself, always funny but not capable of the divine miracle it would take to turn this thing into gold. Wanda Sykes gets a few good one liners, but her character seems to exist entirely as a one-liner machine and nothing else. There's also a scary Congressional aide with a strange potential romantic attraction to our poor Evan, though the movie never does comment on the Bible's attitudes towards homosexuality despite having God wandering around D.C. all day.
The movie just sort of chugs along, you chuckle a little, you try to ignore how progressively stupid it gets, and then it's over. Not bad for a family rental, but not much more than that either.