“After watching Evan Almighty, I noticed that the exiting audience — pale, wan and harrowed — were collectively singing the post-movie equivalent of the lamentations of Jeremiah, emitting cries not unlike those of the sorely tested Job or the benighted citizens of plague-fatigued Egypt, and generally cursing His Holy Name with every obscenity in the biblical lexicon.
“All the Big Questions popped rapidly into my mind: ‘Why does God inflict Bad Movies on Good People?’ and more pertinently, ‘How can we know for certain that God is good if he permitted this piece of dung to reach our screens?’
“Certainly Evan Almighty (‘a laugh-drought of biblical proportions,’ one critic called it) performed a breathtaking miracle by making Steve Carell unfunny, but the film should have believers and nonbelievers alike down on their knees praying for funnier comedies.” — thus sayeth (or said-ith) The Guardian‘s John Patterson.