Tom Shadyac
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Connections, in both directions
The film borrows a lot from the seminal classic "It's a Wonderful Life", including a cute homage in which Bruce literally lassos the moon to make the night more romantic.
It's just that, given the rich premise of the film, writers Steve Koren, Mark O'Keefe and Steve Oedekerk could have done much more than turn it into a weak copy of "It's a Wonderful Life."
Basically, Bruce Almighty wants to be It's A Wonderful Life (explicitly referenced twice in the film) meets Groundhog Day, except they only really got as far as the pitch ("Jim Carrey IS God!
Considering that the basic story is just a variation of the old "It's A Wonderful Life" plot, it isn't surprising that the protagonist eventually recognizes that theme and has a transformation for the better.
An "It's a Wonderful Life" of 1946 -- which it seems to have as a model -- it's not.
Try to envision -- if you dare -- Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life with boob jokes, a running gag involving a urinating dog, a "butt monkey" and, worst of all, a tendency to mock the sort of gooey, uplifting twaddle that Carrey's film finally becomes.
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Directed by Ben Stiller
influenced by The Nutty Professor (1996), Patch Adams (1998)
Characters
From its brilliant opening sequence—three bogus “pre-title” trailers establishing the characters and careers of action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller, channeling Stallone), comedian Jeff “Fats” Portnoy (Jack Black, mocking multi-character Eddie Murphy fart-fests like The Nutty Professor ) and multi-Oscar-winning Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr., taking down Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson on his way toward Iron Eagle -era Louis Gosset Jr.), Tropic Thunder marks a clear and welcome return to the sketch-comedy priorities of Stiller’s influential television work.
Black plays Jeff Portnoy, a comedy superstar whose films are a thinly-veiled attack on Eddie Murphy's feature-length fart-gags The Nutty Professor and Norbit.
Joining Speedman is Aussie character actor Kirk Lazurus (Robert Downey Jr.), who undergoes a pigment operation to darken his skin for his role, and Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a comedy actor who made a name for himself in The Fatties – think Eddie Murphy and his many roles in The Nutty Professor and throw in some added farts.
…la Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor."
Stiller plays fading action star Tugg Speedman, who has run a “Die Hard”-like franchise into the ground with “Scorcher 6: Global Meltdown” and tried unsuccessfully to reinvent his career playing a simple-minded farmhand in the mawkish “Simple Jack” (think “Patch Adams”).
There are several scenes where Bullock’s facial reactions reminded me of Jim Carrey in scenes from Dumb & Dumber and Liar Liar .
Bruce Almighty tackled this idea over a decade ago, and you quickly realise that the Jim Carrey blockbuster executed it with much more wit and invention.
Directed by Monty Python’s Terry Jones, who should know better, it’s an aggressively witless Bruce Almighty rip-off that sees the newly empowered Pegg seducing neighbour Kate Beckinsale, enlarging his own penis and trudging through a plethora of “jokes” so leaden that the movie eventually seems to take…
Although Jones has said he loosely based the story around H.G. Wells' short story, The Man Who Could Work Miracles, modern audiences are more likely to compare it to 2003's Bruce Almighty, starring Jim Carrey.
I was reminded of Kevin Smith’s Dogma, a film with many faults that nevertheless managed to cast aspersions on a whole litany of sins including idolatry, adultery, suicide, cheating on taxes, and neglecting the needs of one’s elderly parents.
Other recent movies have featured the Lord as a character - "Dogma," the "Oh, God!" trilogy - but this is the first where a character inherits the powers of the deity.
Perhaps fearful of the reception that accompanied other films that attempted to fuse edgy humor with genuine thoughts and feelings about the nature of God (such as "Life of Brian" and "Dogma"), "Bruce Almighty" chooses to lay its "God is great" message with all of the subtlety of an especially ham-fisted Sunday-school teacher.
The yuppie-finding-his-soul scenario is a very old and not particularly compelling one, and the fact that this film borrows elements from “ Regarding Henry ,” “ American Beauty ,” Saul Bellow’s “Herzog,” and the Jim Carrey “Liar, Liar,” for heaven’s sake, does not exactly redound to its benefit.
Much like Groundhog Day, the movie is endlessly inventive in the way it executes its concept.
Basically, Bruce Almighty wants to be It's A Wonderful Life (explicitly referenced twice in the film) meets Groundhog Day, except they only really got as far as the pitch ("Jim Carrey IS God!
Instead, Bruce Almighty is a film that wanted to be the Creator's Groundhog Day, but ended up closer to Life or Something Like It and King Ralph.
Toni Erdmann (2016)
Directed by Maren Ade
influenced by Patch Adams (1998), Liar Liar (1997)
Themes Characters Plot
That said, it’s actually possible to distill the life philosophy practiced by elementary school teacher Winfried to a Patch Adams -ish level: he too believes that laughter is the best medicine.
The movie’s most impressive trick is that while Winfried’s stated philosophy is “Don’t lose the humor,” his disguises never descend into a Patch Adams-type aggressive whimsy.
Individual scenes are staged to recall the likes of Mrs. Doubtfire and Liar Liar, but it's Ade's depiction of corporate homogeneity that feels too familiar for a while, defined by picky eaters, social snobs, business card-swapping networkers, and ugly-chic poolside bars.
While the presence of Steve Oedekerk (Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty) in the rather voluminous list of screenwriters throwing ingredients into the stew would seem to suggest that this film perhaps started in a more comic vein, under the direction of Jon Favreau (Iron Man) it took a decidedly serious turn, trading in potential silliness for an aura of grave austerity that sometimes feels entirely at odds with images in which, well, cowboys and aliens share the same screen space.
In the meantime, Arthur takes a shine to his new gun, which falls out of his clown costume while he's entertaining at a children's hospital--a startlingly funny taboo gag of the sort at which Phillips excels, one that pings off latent antipathy for Patch Adams (yours, mine, ours) while also serving as a handy counterargument to Republican idiot Dan Crenshaw's conviction that friends should be allowed to borrow his firearms.
I’ve been watching body-positive comedies since the 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor, and I have to say that this one doesn’t do anything particularly new.
It’s a Jim Carrey sort of premise, warping Yes Man (itself kind of a spin on Liar Liar’s compulsory character trait) into a Nickelodeon-esque kids-run-the-world movie.
I mean, Hardy is the literal face of this anti-hero origin story, but its failure is not his fault; that the film (and his character’s journey) intermittently resembles “Teen Wolf” and “Liar Liar” (complete with Hardy channeling Carrey’s manic energy) explicitly feels like the byproduct of the worst sort of committee thinking.
In a weird amalgam of two other Eddie Murphy comedies The Nutty Professor and Dr. Dolittle the zookeeper takes the creatures' counsel and transforms himself into an alpha-male boor, a character James doesn't have the meanness to inhabit.
If you were annoyed by Eddie Murphy’s prosthetic-laden racial stereotypes in films like “The Nutty Professor” and “Norbit,” I can’t imagine why you’d give this nonsense a pass.
The climatic 'miracle' ending, which finds Joe travelling to Venezuela, is staged like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" crossed with "The Ten Commandments" featuring a native Venezuelan Indian tribe who like their privacy.
Think of the ecstatic confidence of Richard Pryor in the '70s, Robin Williams in the '80s, and Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice (1988): They raged, they purged—they mixed vaudeville and rock 'n' roll in equal proportions.
Often playing like an unwanted sequel to Dragonfly, a Kevin Costner flop from a few years ago also released by Universal, White Noise makes little sense and has the annoying habit of depending on loud, jolting sound effects in a desperate attempt to produce scares.
But like the dreadful 2002 Dragonfly , in which a man is sent on a rescue mission directed by communications from his dead wife, White Noise takes a sudden shift as Jonathan's wife guides him to hunt down a serial killer.
The Invention of Lying (2009)
Directed by Ricky Gervais
influenced by Bruce Almighty (2003)
Plot Themes
Invention - a mash-up of two Jim Carrey comedies, "Liar Liar" and "Bruce Almighty" - flirts with being a one-gag pony.
"The Invention of Lying" turns out to be "Bruce Almighty" for atheists.
Fans hoping for some of Gervais� The Office wit will find themselves staring at an agnostic version of Bruce Almighty, scratching their heads until they draw blood.
At times, it feels as if Gervais has made a freethinker Lecture Film of his own, as two-dimensional in its smug secularism as Bruce Almighty was in its vacation Bible-school pandering.
Meanwhile Moorhead's onscreen Aaron evokes a young Cary Elwes, somewhere between the innocent charm of The Princess Bride's Westley and the awkward idiocy of Jerry the stepdad in Liar Liar.