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  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • God decides that Bruce needs to be taught a lesson in humility. His method for this involves making Bruce nigh-on omnipotent. Does anyone else see the problem with this? In order to teach Bruce to be less of a dick, he gives him the means to have the best week of his life, followed by a couple of days of being a little bit sad, before his life's pretty good again. Meanwhile, millions of people suffer from Bruce's laziness and occasional cruelty. God allowed millions of people to suffer to teach this one guy a lesson, making Him seem like either a Jerkass God, or at best someone who decided to play favorites with Bruce and correct his life course without putting a check on how much chaos he could cause. While God does go back and clean up Bruce's messes at the end of the film, a lot of people suffered in the meantime.
    • Is Bruce really as much a jerk as he's initially presented? While he does use his powers to torment some people he has a personal grudge against, mostly he uses them to enrich his own life in ways that don't directly harm others. While he starts using his powers in more abusive ways once it goes to his head, the problems that arise are due to lack of foresight rather than malice, like causing a natural disaster so he could cover it on the news or answering everyone's prayers "yes" automatically. In the latter, we see that Bruce tried to make people happy and do good in the world, but even with his superhuman typing skills the prayers were piling up faster than he could answer them and he realized that doing so would take up all of his free time.
    • Evan is presented as a smug, condescending co-worker who steals the job Bruce wants. But, we're only seeing things from Bruce's point of view — the sequel Evan Almighty shows that Evan has a wife and two sons. Given that news coverage is a business where one may be expected to travel a lot and spend a lot of time working on stories alone, an anchor job would be a huge break for Evan that means a pay raise, job security, and having a better shot at balancing work and family life. In fact, it seems like Bruce's rivalry with Evan is entirely one-way. It's likely Evan considers Bruce his friend, and doesn't even realise Bruce doesn't like him.
    • Susan Ortega. Was she always interested in Bruce, which Susan decided to try to finally make her move once she heard that his relationship with Grace was having issues? Or is Susan a Gold Digger who tried to seduce Bruce once it became clear to her that he was the up-and-coming new talent on his way to the top?
  • Designated Villain: Evan Baxter, whose only crime is legitimately getting the job Bruce wanted. Although that might be the point, given that Bruce is portrayed as a jerk at first. Maybe the creators realized this, which is why Evan is the protagonist of the sequel.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Admit it. Rather than take on the movie's message of "Be the miracle", you instead left the cinema wishing that God would give you his powers, so that you too could cause spontaneous orgasms, get a fancy car, and walk on water. (Or rule the world, at least.) The movie tries to show the downsides of the powers, but most of them are just caused by Bruce's stupidity, so you're left with a movie that just shows how awesome it would be to be God.
  • Escapist Character: Aside from having an attractive girlfriend and a steady job, Bruce gets to spend several weeks with God's Powers, with which he could do absolutely ANYTHING he wanted (aside from tell anyone he was God or affect free will), such as getting a promotion at work, revenge on people who'd done him wrong, making himself the world's greatest sex machine, and effectively sending Grace into a second puberty. Really the only reason all the bad stuff happened to Bruce was that he was stupid, and seemed to forget that he could, in his own words, "Clean everything up in 5 minutes if he wanted to".
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Bruce moving the moon causes a massive tidal wave to hit Japan.
    • In the Deleted Scene listed under Space Whale Aesop on the film's main page, God shows Bruce an example of a person who triumphed without a Deus ex machina: Lance Armstrong. This movie was made in 2003, when the cyclist was regarded as a hero for dealing with cancer as he won Tour de France after Tour de France, but in 2012 it was confirmed that he had been using performance-enhancing drugs all along. It's definitely for the best that this sequence didn't make it into the movie.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Bruce's complaint at the beginning of the film, "God is too busy giving Evan everything he wants!" is a lot funnier after Evan Almighty.
    • Morgan Freeman suggesting Bruce watch the Discovery Channel from time to time. Maybe Through the Wormhole?
    • Steve Carell playing a news anchor, in contrast to his breakout role playing a weatherman in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Even better, there's a scene where his character Evan ends up getting in trouble for reading directly from a prompter that has been tampered with, which also happens to Ron Burgundy in the latter movie.
    • Morgan Freeman giving advice and cool abilities to a character named Bruce.
    • Jim Carrey automatically replying "Yes" to any requests or proposals.
    • The news crew arrested for possession of 220 pounds of marijuana. Recreational cannabis has been legal in the US since 2012, starting in the state of Washington followed by Colorado just a week later. The following year, the country of Uruguay legalized it.
  • I Am Not Shazam: Bruce's surname is Nolan. "Bruce Almighty" is the title he gives himself.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: For many people, the rest of the movie is So Okay, It's Average, but Morgan Freeman playing the role of God is just too cool to ignore.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • B-E-A-utiful. To a lesser extent, the "It's good" repetition.
    • "God is Morgan Freeman."
    • Bruce typing on his keyboard really, really fast is a decently popular reaction GIF.
    • Steve Carell's gibberish.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Steve Carell, in an early role before his breakout success in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Office.
  • Sequelitis: More like Spinoff-itis? Either way, while this movie isn't exactly considered a masterpiece, it's still agreed on that it's much better than Evan Almighty.
  • Signature Scene: Evan's botched broadcast, particularly the segment where Evan is made to babble incoherently. They even used this scene in the first trailers for the sequel to indicate Evan's Ascended Extra status.
  • Special Effects Failure:
    • When Bruce parts the traffic jam, it's obvious that the footage is sped up, as the traffic light blinks faster while the cars are moving into position. Also, the pedestrians on the sidewalk give it away.
    • The spoon that comes out of Bruce's mouth in the diner is clearly CGI.
  • The Catchphrase Catches On:
  • Tear Jerker: Grace praying for God to take away her feelings for Bruce, and Bruce later saying that he just wants her to be happy. It's also an In-Universe Tear Jerker for Bruce as he finally realizes how much he hurt her. This is when he breaks down in tears and renounces his powers.
    • The scenes at the Blue Palm is especially heartwrenching since Grace seems to be a mix of both nervous and exceptionally excited, thinking Bruce may actually about to propose to her...and then Bruce pulls an unintentional Bait & Switch, and she is VERY clearly crushed. The only reason Bruce doesn't seem to realize this is because he's too wrapped up in himself to figure it out.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Other than being eye-candy as a fellow worker at Eyewitness News, Susan Ortega isn't given all that much to do other than one brief moment late in the movie where she tries to seduce Bruce, getting him caught "cheating".
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: They could have used the last act to teach Grace about forgiveness, but she instead breaks up with Bruce without trying to hear his side of the story and it takes a car accident for her to even speak to him. The filmmakers tried to use this to show Bruce how to be grateful in life, but it doesn't actually erase the infidelity that Grace witnessed. The writers could have had Grace learn something as well, but instead she comes off as someone who has been completely screwed over due to a simple misunderstanding.
  • Trailer Joke Decay: Bruce's dog using the toilet like a man, and using God's powers to make Grace's boobs bigger, were featured in every single trailer.
  • The Woobie: Grace. She's on the sidelines as Bruce's power goes to his head and she tries to support him through the tough times when he loses his job and car.
  • Unintentional Period Piece:
    • God's method of contacting Bruce is a pager.
    • Bruce's prayer email program is a parody of Yahoo, complete with parodies of their early-2000s jingles.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The scene where Bruce answers the prayers via email while drinking coffee. What you see is him typing rapidly while drinking coffee at normal pace. In reality, Jim Carrey was typing at a normal speed, while moving the coffee cup very slowly, and then the footage was sped-up.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The film got a lot of flak from parents who ignored the film's age rating (PG-13 in America, the local equivalent in most other countries, though some rated it lower) and took their kids to see it. The film contains swearing (several fucks and shits) and sexual content (Bruce blows up a girl's skirt, makes his girlfriend have spontaneous orgasms, and makes her boobs bigger). Apparently because it's a movie about God it should be child-friendly.

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