YMMV / Evan Almighty

• Anvilicious: Not by as much as the critics made out, but the film does have a much more overtly Christian influence than Bruce Almighty did, which was more broadly spiritual and didn't pin the movie's version of God to any specific religion.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: This movie banked on Steve Carrell's popularity, forgetting that he played an antagonist in the original film who didn't have a very fleshed out back-story. Combine it with more overt Christian themes than the original film, a focus on spectacle as opposed to jokes, and heavy-handed environmental themes, it had no chance of living up to Bruce Almighty. And while Steve Carrell was and still is a bankable star, he's nowhere close to Jim Carrey's box-office draw.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Rita. It helps that she's played by Wanda Sykes.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The ending glosses over the millions of dollars of property damage, the hundreds of people who probably died, and the fact that everyone on the ark, such as the Baxters, has lost their homes and possessions. Believe it or not, this is a huge improvement over the original scripted ending, which had no twist to the scenario at all; there's a world-ending flood and the ones on the ark are the only survivors. Naturally, it didn't take long for everyone to figure out this might be a tad depressing for a goofy comedy. It would also make God an even bigger Jerkass God due to the fact that the original story of Noah's Ark ends with God explicitly promising never to destroy the world via flood again.
• Fridge Logic: In-universe at least, there's no explanation for the animals that are not part of the local habitat to be on the ark, as opposed to the animals that are. Especially since a line at the end implies that those animals aren’t from a zoo that got caught in the crossfire. This made sense for the original pitch when the movie was going to end with a global flooding, but as it stands it makes little sense for monkeys and pandas to be boarding Evan’s ark.
• Retroactive Recognition: A police officer, Officer Collins is played by none other than Dean Norris, now better known as Breaking Bad's Hank Schrader.
• Sequelitis: While not a direct sequel, many felt this movie was a major step down from its predecessor, dropping that film's interesting premise in favor of a much more straightforward "Noah's Ark in the modern day" story, also with clear influence from the The Santa Clause films.
• Special Effect Failure: The flood scene was the main reason why this was the most expensive comedy ever produced (enough that the film had no chance to make back its budget after its tepid opening weekend). While few would call it terrible-looking, the lack of proper shading and weight on the CGI put it on par with most other average-budgeted comedies.

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