Evan Almighty

I had put off watching this movie for a long time because Bruce Almighty was a pretty bad movie. So I did not expect much from this movie. Bruce Almighty really did suck. First off why did that guy get chosen to be taught a lesson in that way, there are a lot of people who have much better reasons to hate the way the world works. What the main character did with the power which had no restrictions other than can't mess with free will was stupid. Given damn near unlimited power and he he uses it to give his girlfriend bigger breasts and make the dog pee in the toilet. There are so many things that he could have/should have done with that kind of power. I could continue listing things I hated about that movie but I digress, I intended to write Evan Almighty not Bruce Almighty.

Retelling of the Noah story in the bible. Evan Baxter the newsman from Bruce Almighty that was the rival of that movies main character is elected to Congress. He has a new house and starting a new life when God shows up and tells him to build an arc. Animals start showing up in pairs. People think he is crazy.

Evan Almighty was, in my opinion, a pretty good movie. Part of this is because I did not expect much from it and was actually expecting it to be really bad since Bruce Almighty was bad. I'd probably rate it worse if I was looking at it as a stand alone instead of comparing it to Bruce Almighty. Truthfully the movie was fairly predictable, had some factual errors (like congress parking and the guy being a newscaster while running for office since he would have to quite before running), and wasn't all that funny. I still liked it though. I particularly liked the animals helping build the arc. It was done in such away that I could believe animals could/would help in the manner they did.

Liked that the movie had a green message and actually tried to be green. Some movies or people will say one thing but do another. I like they did what they preached. It is very good that they used bikes instead of cars (also good that they gave bikes to the workers), that they planted 2000 trees to counter their effects on the environment, and possibly best of all that they donated the wood used in the movie (they had actually built an arc) to habitat for humanity to build houses. I hope that more movies will reuse or salvage the material used instead of tossing it in a land fill somewhere.

On the dvd there were some extra's. Including green tips and a game. The green tips are pretty good, though I do wonder how many coffee shops will allow you to bring your own reusable cups? It makes sense to me since less cups would be manufactured, less environmental impact, and cheaper for the coffee shop since they wouldn't have to pay for the cups. That said though some places just won't allow it. Corporate policy or managers decision being that only cups provided are allowed to be used.

The animal round up game was alright and I was happy to have gotten every single question correct (Yay, I know my animal trivia - of course had it been something like sports trivia I wouldn't have gotten them right). I did notice one problem with the trivia questions. The point was to match up the pairs of animals to go on the arc and it had you match up a male lion with a male lion instead of a female lion.

I don't generally think about the amount of work taken to make a movie, or the time it takes, or how much money is spent on the movie but in this case, I kept thinking about it. Getting all those animals and their trainers, building the arc, the amount of cgi needed, etc. Had to have been expensive and time consuming.

Random acts of kindness which is a message in the movie is a good message. Though some random acts of kindness, depending on where you live maybe illegal. For example, adding a coin to a parking meter that is about to expire when the vehicle is not your is illegal in some areas. Cleaning up a park maybe illegal since those parks are supposed to be cleaned by city workers (recently happened in Cleveland where volunteer groups cleaned several parks and the city workers are suing since that is their job). Also some random acts of kindness may not be seen as an act of kindness. For example, some people, most commonly women feminists, will actually get mad at you for holding the door open for them, even though you would hold the door open for anyone in that circumstance.