Carrey's in divine form for most of 'Almighty'

Jim Carrey with Divine powers? Heaven help us!Heaven - in the form of Morgan Freeman as God in a maharishi tunic - helps Carrey, an aspiring TV news anchor in Bruce Almighty, a disarming comedy about the uses and abuses of omnipotence.

After enduring Carrey at sea in Man on the Moon (1999), Me, Myself and Irene (2000), and The Majestic (2001), it's refreshing to see the madcap comedian reemerge in familiar waters.

As Bruce Nolan, a goofball Buffalo TV reporter inevitably assigned to soft features instead of the hard news he craves, Carrey commands his loose limbs and elastic face to behave. It is a task tantamount to containing Niagara Falls, and watching him try not to smile has the effect of producing convulsive belly laughs.

Despite heroic attempts to compose himself, Bruce is too flighty to anchor a raft, let alone the evening news. And when another colleague gets the coveted job, Bruce has an on-camera meltdown that is the film's funniest (and most profane) sequence.

Instead of counting his blessings that he has a good job and a devoted girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston, in the Donna Reed role), Bruce curses God, who turns up as Freeman, a guy at a concern called Omni Presents.

The Man Upstairs makes Bruce a deal: OK, let's see if you can do my job better than I do it.

Once he has the Power, Bruce does as any 10-year-old would. He uses it for instant-gratification, gets back at those who have demeaned him, and toilet-trains his incontinent hound.

It's in the comic spirit of Liar Liar (1997), a movie in which Carrey's character likewise is given mystical powers (he's a compulsive liar turned compulsive truth-teller) and a movie likewise directed by Tom Shadyac.

Because there's always been a megalomaniac lurking inside Carrey's manic personality, it's funny to see him literally play God. "Be fruitful and . . . do long division!" is Bruce's First Commandment. His Second: Thou shalt have no other anchors before me.

Possibly no comic since Jerry Lewis has been as enterprising as Carrey when it comes to showing how exhilarating infantile behavior is, although Tom Hanks in Big comes close. When Bruce gets back at the newly installed anchor by making him speak in tongues or when he parts the Red Sea of tomato soup in his bowl, you enjoy his childlike brio.

Wildly inconsistent in tone, for two acts Bruce Almighty is a diverting comedy that in its last act becomes unusually sober. While the film both explicitly and implicitly pays tribute to Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, the upshift from irreverent slapstick to reverent sermonette is extremely abrupt.

In the end, while Freeman emerges with both his dignity and humor intact, the same cannot be said of either Carrey or the film.

Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.

Bruce Almighty *** (out of four stars)

Produced by Tom Shadyac, Jim Carrey, James D. Brubaker, Michael Bostick, Steve Koren and Mark O'Keefe, directed by Tom Shadyac, written by Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe and Steve Oedekerk, photography by Dean Semler, music by John Debney, distributed by Universal Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 34 mins.

Bruce Nolan. . . Jim Carrey

God. . . Morgan Freeman

Grace Connelly. . . Jennifer Aniston

Susan Ortega. . . Catherine Bell

Jack. . . Philip Baker Hall

Parent's guide: PG-13 (profanity, sexual content, crude humor)

Showing at: area theaters