The overall premise behind “Evan Almighty” isn’t that almighty. The idea that God has commanded a modern-day man to build an ark is a little weak to begin with.  Since the movie is a comedy, viewers know that there’s not really going to be a hugely suspenseful life-or-death situation.  Maybe if the world was facing a flood caused by Global Warming the idea of building an ark would be more enticing – except that we have lots of boats and ships everywhere, not to mention submarines and aircraft carriers. So the idea is limited in today’s market.  Putting the ark in a land-locked state, in the middle of a high-class residential community, is a step in the right direction.  But it’s still not mind-grabbing. The movie is a sequel to “Bruce Almighty”, which starred Jim Carrey.  Carrey was offered the sequel, but ...

  "Meet the Fockers", directed by Jay Roach, accomplishes what most sequels fail miserably at – to equal or best the original. This is one sequel that manages to bring in laughs by the barrel. Most of us remember the comedic performances in "Meet the Parents". Well, the gang's all here in the sequel, with the addition of two more veterans to the screen. Robert De Niro returns as Jack Byrnes, retired CIA agent, still hot to expel Greg from his "circle of trust". Of course, Ben Stiller is back to play Gaylord "Greg" Focker (you just can't make up names like that anymore). Rounding out the returning cast are Teri Polo as Greg's fiancée, Pam Byrnes, and Blythe Danner as Pam's mother, Dina. Even Owen Wilson comes back to make a cameo. Two shining additions to the sequel are Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand as Greg's parents, Bernie and Rozalin Focker. ...

  Jerry Lewis started the whole spin on “The Nutty Professor”, which in itself was an interpretation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. The whole concept, in Stevenson’s work, then in Lewis’s and finally in Murphy’s, is the conceit that inside every ordinary man is an extraordinary one—in Lewis’ film and this sequel to a remake, he’s brimming with sexual power and suave charisma, waiting to get out. Where Stevenson’s own treatment lay in tragedy with a touch of horror, Lewis and Murphy played to lowbrow humor that only the French truly seem to hold in esteem. But Murphy’s movie was a success, prompting this sequel. As with Lewis, Murphy portrays a university professor who’s incredibly intelligent but lacks confidence and social graces. For Lewis’s character, he was hampered by was ugliness and shyness. Murphy’s Professor Sherman Klump is obscenely overweight, as is his whole family, whom the viewer gets ...

  Billy Madison (Adam Sandler) is the son of Brian Madison (Darren McGavin), the rich magnate behind the Madison hotel chain. Faced with his imminent retirement, the elder Madison is pressed to make a decision about who will take over the company when he retires: one of his executives, Eric Gordon (Bradley Whitford) or his immature layabout son, Billy. The twenty-something Billy lives a life of drunken leisure at the Madison estate, so his father becomes wary of leaving the corporation in his hands, especially since Billy only made it through elementary school, high school and college because his father paid off the teachers. Determined to prove himself to his father and keep the company in the family, Billy makes a deal with his father: he’ll take a crash course in all twelve grades, learning each grade in two weeks and passing an exam for each. If Billy graduates all grades successfully, his father ...

  For some time, Jim Carrey was often described as a Jerry Lewis imitator run amok, but what he does in “Liar Liar,” Lewis never tried at all. The movie is a blend of a heartwarming—but not sentimental—family story and a raucous slapstick comedy. Lewis tried that sort of thing often enough, but when he did, he tried for Chaplinesque pathos: we were supposed to feel sorry for his characters. Carrey never asks us to pity his characters; either they're blithely above it all, like Ace Ventura or, in a different way, his nincompoop in "Dumb and Dumber," or they've dug the holes for themselves, as in "The Cable Guy" and now "Liar Liar." From this point on, he varied his movies and characters even more, from “The Truman Show” to “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (together, his two best movies and performances), makeup and effects-laden extravaganzas like “How the Grinch Stole ...