It's back to basics for Jim Carrey in the God-fearing/loving comedy Bruce Almighty. The movie has some true laugh-out-loud moments but suffers from a sad and slow third act.

Bruce Nolan is a reporter for a local news channel in Buffalo, NY. He is in competition for the anchor chair but keeps getting stuck doing happy, feel-good stories while his main competitor gets the news stories. When it's announced live on-air that Evan would be getting the anchor seat, he has a meltdown on camera and ends up getting fired. For this, and every other thing that goes wrong in his life, he blames God. So God decides to come down for a visit and give all of his powers to Bruce basically saying 'if you think you can do it better, go right ahead.' At first Bruce uses his powers to make his own life better: making a better car, moving traffic out of the way, making Evan into a blubbering idiot. But soon he comes to realize that what he's doing affects the rest of the world and that the rest of the world has problems too. When he tries to make everyone happy, he ends up doing just the opposite. And when his girlfriend leaves him he figures out that God doesn't have it easy.

After a few dramatic turns in the last couple of years that didn't meet with a lot of success, Carrey decided to rejoin his old running mate Tom Shadyac and get back to making comedies. Bruce Almighty fits the Carrey bill by allowing him to talk funny, make faces and go completely manic at times. And for the most part, it works pretty well. There were scenes in the movie that had me laughing so hard, tears were coming out of my eyes. There is a scene you see in the trailers with him controlling one of the anchors voices that's only the tip of the iceburg. When let loose, Carrey is one of the funniest men ever shown on screen. Much like Eddie Murphy, when allowed to use his talent for ad-libbing and improvisation, Carrey can make even the simplest scenes side-splittingly funny. It's when he's reigned in, or has to suddenly go all dramatic that he loses his flair.

That was the problem with the third act of the movie. When all the realizations and understandings hit, the comedy is taken from the film and it makes the movie feel really slow. Yes it's nice to make movies with characters that come full circle but this time the movie ground to a halt really quickly. It did pick up again right at the end so it wasn't all bad. The supporting cast was solid if, well, secondary. Jennifer Aniston was nothing more than eye candy in the film, as was Catherine Bell. Morgan Freeman was a good choice to play God (I wonder how many actors have gotten to have the credit of 'God' on their resume) and Steve Carell as Bruce's competitor Evan had some really funny scenes in his small amount of screen time. Come to think of it, the character who had the second most amount of laughs after Carrey was probably the dog. From what I understand, the dog was picked up at the pound just weeks before production and was trained extremely quickly.

Overall, Bruce Almighty was a fun movie that showcased Jim Carrey at his finest, but also slowed down tremendously towards the end. Still, it was nice to see Carrey back on his feet again in a role that fits him to a T.

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