Evan Almighty

Though Evan Almighty is a pleasant, family-friendly, blue-screen comedy with a transparent moral, the film also possesses an admirably ambitious socially conscious bent, accompanied by an estimated $175,000,000 price tag, making it the most expensive comedy ever produced. Spinning off his character in the Jim Carrey vehicle Bruce Almighty, Steve Carell plays straight-laced clean freak Evan Baxter, who packs his wife and three sons into a shiny Hummer and moves them to a giant, resource-squandering new home to coincide with his election to congress on a "Change the World” platform. Following his sons’ example, Baxter prays for success with his campaign pledge before his first day at work and, before long, he’s haunted by the number 6:14 and followed by animals. It turns out God (Morgan Freeman) has answered Baxter’s prayer, assigning him the task of building an ark before the coming flood brought on by environmental negligence and collapse. So the film proceeds with sight gags involving all manner of animals and Baxter’s hairy transformation into Noah. Myriad bonus features in this eco-friendly, "green” packaged DVD demonstrate how director Tom Shadyac ensured the cast and crew enacted the film’s message. "The Almighty Green Set” outlines Shadyac’s various attempts to limit the shoot’s environmental "footprint.” The director bought bicycles for the entire staff to use as an alternate means of transport. The astoundingly ginormous Ark constructed specifically for the film might seem like a waste but, according to "The Ark-Itects of Noah’s Ark,” all of the metal and wood was recycled and any extra on-set building materials were donated to Habitat for Humanity. Hundreds of species were utilised for realistic Ark cargo, representing the largest number of animals ever to appear in a single film. All of these efforts served as an attempt to get young viewers to closely evaluate their personal practices and humanise the environmental peril we’re all in. Cloaked in a lighter guise with a host of Biblical allusions, Evan Almighty elicits laughter and thought with modest success. Plus: deleted scenes, outtakes, more.