Movie-Evan Almighty

Evan Almighty, starring Steve Carrell, was a movie that I did not have a lot of hopes for. But I like Carrell quite a bit, so I decided to watch it.

First of all, this movie has some very interesting religious themes. Carell, a new congressman, is asked by God, Morgan Freeman, to build an ark to prepare the world for the flood. Carell doubts...a lot, but is slowly transformed into the biblical Noah, as he grows a long white beard and animals start following him in pairs, two by two.

The modern day Noah builds the ark, but finds himself a leper in his community. the neighbors laugh at him, his wife (Lauren Graham looking very cute) and kids leave him, temporarily at least, he loses his spot in Congress. And it makes me think, what did the biblical Noah have to deal with when he built his ark? Probably the same darn thing.

My dear mother, who is a faithful a Catholic as you will ever see, once told me that she doubted that the modern world would recognize Christ should he come again as he did before. She would, by her admission, be like the Jews at the time of Christ, and would never believe that this person was God! Imagine, a guy walking the streets of downtown San Diego, pretty ragged, homeless, gathering other ragtags around him, a prostitute, and him saying, "I am God, come to redeem mankind." He would be locked up at the very least.

Evan Almighty illustrates this very well. Would any of us believe? I think the least believing would be those that say they are the most faithful. It seems they never follow Christ's axiom of "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, so you do unto me." The LEAST of his brothers. That means the dirty and homeless and sick and drug abused. So you hate them, you hate Christ. Hmmmm, something for us all to think about.

Another thing this movie got me thinking about. Carell does what he needs to do despite all that it costs. What does it cost to be a good person? Do we make the choices to be good, or do we just go with the crowd? Despite being ridiculed, do we do what is right?

OK, that is a lot of thought for a fun comedy. But I think that is what makes this very funny movie good to me...there is a lot of depth behind the funny scenes, a lot of religious and philosophical underpinnings to the whole idea of doing what god says, or doing what is right.

I liked Evan Almighty a lot, and it gave me some things to ponder.