Newly elected to Congress, the polished, preening newscaster, Evan Baxter, is the next one anointed by God to accomplish a holy mission--walking in the footsteps of Bruce Almighty. Evan leaves Buffalo behind and shepherds his family to suburban northern Virginia. Once there, his life gets turned upside-down when God appears and mysteriously commands him to build an ark. But his befuddled family just can't decide whether Evan is having an extraordinary mid-life crisis or is truly onto something of Biblical proportions.

The budget for Evan Almighty reportedly ballooned past the 200 million mark making it the most expensive comedy film of all time. Watching the movie you have to wonder how this is even possible, I mean the movies run time thankfully is a very short ninety minutes and except for the inclusion of all the animals and one flood scene the movie really doesn’t do anything that marvelous or fantastic that would warrant such an enormous budget. I mean for 200 million you would think they could actually make a movie that was funny, heck you should be able to buy the best screen writers in the business to make your movie the best comedy of all time as well the most expensive. But sadly despite all the money spent the movie is only funny on occasion, is only entertaining now and then and is clearly the biggest waste of money maybe ever in the history of Hollywood.

The idea of the film isn’t that great to begin with, I mean a cheap semi-sequel to a film that had a good cast and told a story that was unique and new at the time. Now the story isn’t unique as we have already seen Bruce Almighty and the cleverness of the film doesn’t pass onto the sequel. Plus we are using a bit character from the first film as the star of the somewhat sequel. Sure Steve Carrell has rocketed in popularity since the original and even has a funny movie under his belt but he is simply being asked to do to much in this film. Then you throw in the whole biblical gag angle of Evan Baxter being asked by god to build an ark a story that wasn’t meant to be humorous when it was originally told in the bible and you get a movie that is very lackluster and just not that funny. Then the movie gets overly sappy as it tries to cram a message of family down your throat. For the most part of the film you are bored in between gags and then you get a slight chuckle at the gag and then its right back to the boredom the film seems to excrete.

I think someone needs to remind Steve Carell when he’s not doing the Office that he’s not doing the Office. You can see the producers, the directors, the writers all trying to capitalize on the success of the Office by putting many of his traits from the show into the Evan Baxter character and while they work on the Office they fail miserably on the big screen because Evan is nothing like Michael Scott, he is supposedly the overworked family man and that has nothing to do with his Office character. So to ask him to basically be Michael Scott on the big screen because that’s what he is on the small screen and what he is famous for right now is downright stupid and ridiculous, The savior of the film that is if the film could be saved is Wanda Sykes who has almost all the best lines and the funniest one liners of the movie. But even Wanda isn’t enough to make the movie funny, heck another 200 million might not have made the movie funny.

Grade: D+