(ABP) — A flood is coming, warns character Evan Baxter, a modern-day Noah in the new movie Evan Almighty. But in Baxter's case, the threatening waters offer a swell of inspiration for audiences watching through the eyes of faith.
Like several films in this summer's line-up, Evan Almighty is a sequel — of sorts. The movie borrows two characters from the 2003 Bruce Almighty — Baxter himself, a Buffalo, N.Y. television anchorman played by Steve Carell, and God, played by Morgan Freeman. Both films were directed by Tom Shadyac, who is making a career out of mainstream movies with religious and moral themes.
In the new story, Baxter has been elected to Congress on the lofty but vague platform that he will change the world. Leaving New York with his wife, Joan (Lauren Graham), Baxter hopes to make a fresh start not only in Washington but also as a husband and father. Convinced politics is image, he buys an upscale house, gets a Hummer, and obsesses about his middle-age nose hairs.
The first night in her new home, Joan prays for the family to get closer, but for Baxter, talking to God is a challenge. “I am now in a position of great power,” he manages to tell heaven. “So, God, please help me change the world. Okay, that's it, I'm hanging up now.”
Baxter hasn't learned a lesson people in more regular touch with heaven already know: Be careful what you pray for. Woodworking tools and lumber show up at the Baxter house as God, clad in white and armed with a sense of humor, informs the new congressman that the way to make a change is actually to build a big boat.
The pressure Baxter feels from the bizarre call to build an ark in the D.C. suburbs increases as the Capitol Hill newcomer tries to impress powerful Congressman Long (John Goodman), a veteran politico who takes the new guy under his wing in exchange for Baxter's support of a corrupt land-appropriation bill.
Now thick with facial hair and unable to take off the brown robe God leaves him in the bathroom one morning, Baxter's oddly biblical appearance shocks his suit-and-tie congressional colleagues. And when he finally confesses his divine mission in a hearing on live TV, Congressman Long calls for security. Joan takes the boys to her mom's, asking, “Does God know he's destroying our lives?”
Joan later comes back after a nudge from “Al Mighty,” as God's name tag reads, and the family draws closer than ever before as they finish the ark. But even as the now white-bearded Baxter lifts his staff and commands a horde of animals to enter the boat two-by-two, the crowd still jeers under cloudless skies.
Director Shadyac's delight in exploring questions and values rooted in faith goes back much further than his Evan Almighty prequel, Bruce Almighty.
In Shadyac's 1997 Liar, Liar, for example, Jim Carrey plays an up-and-coming but unethical lawyer. After his little boy makes a birthday wish for a dad who would just keep his word, the young attorney is suddenly unable to tell anything but the truth. In Shadyac's 2002 Dragonfly, Kevin Costner is a doctor whose wife, killed on a medical mission, communicates from beyond the grave that death is not a permanent end to life.
Evan Almighty gives faith an even more prominent place than Bruce Almighty, although the new movie's inside jokes and attempt to bring Genesis to life may be lost on audiences without a Christian or Jewish background.
As an example of the Sunday-school-style humor, the sign on a truck delivering ark supplies to Baxter's suburban home reads, “1-800-GO-4-WOOD.” The Baxter family realtor is Eve Adams. Following dinner one night, the bearded and robed Baxter asks his wife, “Do we have anything unleavened?” And though they don't sport names like Shem, Ham or Japheth, Baxter's sons number three, just like in Genesis.
The new movie's retelling of Noah and the Ark is only the latest variation on an ancient theme, according to biblical scholars. Experts acknowledge that the Noah narrative in Genesis echoes similar flood stories in antiquity. And many scholars believe the Genesis story itself grew out of two different versions of the flood in ancient Israel, one presenting God as eager to destroy his wicked creation, another presenting a more gracious view of God, according to Marti Steussy, professor of biblical interpretation at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.
“I think of biblical stories as vines that grow through time,” Steussy explained. “They have roots, and this vine has roots, … deep down in the history of the ancient Near East,” she said of the Noah account. “It continues to grow and get retold, … and obviously, somebody now is still finding it a story worth retelling.”
For Craig Detweiler, director of Reel Spirituality, an institute at Fuller Seminary that explores faith and film, Evan Almighty presents the biblical story in a way relevant to the challenges of today's believers.
“Evan eventually has to learn to tune his ear to God's frequency, despite the public … jeers that may accompany it,” Detweiler said. “That's a timely story for people in their workplaces, for students in their school, for … moms on the soccer fields.”
-30-