Oh, sure. They changed the names of the characters, the location and updated it for the modern day – But don’t delude yourself, screenwriter Steve Oedekerk. Evan Almighty is outright theft of The Book of Genesis and you will incur the wrath of The Almighty!

You don’t think the Good Lord will garnish wages? You just try Him, buster!

Okay, so maybe not. But you have to think at some point it crossed the mind of some shyster to file a lawsuit on behalf of God. Certainly more ridiculous things have been done in His name…

Evan Almighty comes out this weekend and I’m torn because I’m a big Steve Carell fan. I love The Office – watch it ever week – and I think he hit it out of the park with The 40 Year-Old Virgin.

However, Evan Almighty has the earmarks of such an obvious money grab, I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to see it. In fact, I’m worried that it might burn up a little of the good will Carell has earned with his previous roles and cameos.

The movie has two strikes against it, in my mind. First, that it’s director is Tom Shadyac. He made a great first impression with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. But I think most sensible people can see that his direction had little to do with the movie’s success. Unless, of course, you count pointing the camera at Jim Carrey and letting him do whatever the hell he wants some kind of intuative genius.

Since then, Shadyac has made a string of family-friendly, generally broad comedies that fail to inspire. He had another successful follow up with The Nutty Professor. But again, he skates by on the strength of his lead performer in Eddie Murphy. Liar, Liar was a modest hit. and Patch Adams was almost universally despised.

To me, Shadyac is one of those guys who happens to be in the right place at the right time and hitches his wagon to whatever comedy star is big. He’s doing it again with Steve Carell and the whole thing stinks of a hack job to me.

The second strike against the film are reports of it’s bloated $250 million budget – the largest ever for a comedy.

That’s a big red flag for me. Throwing money at an action movie or a science fiction epic is fine. The results typically show up on screen in the form of larger explosions or more ships in a space battle. But NEVER has comedy been made more funny by being given a larger budget. It speaks to gross mismanagement. Or worse, that the film doesn’t have it’s head on it’s shoulders.

I understand that there is probably a lot of effects work going into making the ark look real and it’s a big boat. So a big boat would cost more. I’m also sure it was a headache to get a bunch of animals to do what you want them to on screen and that took a lot of time to shoot. Time costs money. I get that.

But so what? If I can see a movie like Knocked Up – which cost $30 million to make – and laugh my ass off for, let’s say, 90 minutes, is it plausible to assume that a film that cost over eight time more money to make will result in me laughing eight times as hard?

That’s a screwed up measuring stick. I know. But I think it’s indicative of what’s wrong with the big budget Hollywood movies. If you can make more with less, why wouldn’t you? It doesn’t always have to be about spectacle. Even if your story is Biblical in proportion.

On the plus side, the production made a concentrated effort to reduce the impact of it’s carbon footprint by going green on many aspects of assembling the film. In an effort to “walk the walk” of the film’s themes of social and environmental responsibility, materials used in the film were donated to Habitat For Humanity, the cast used two-sided scripts to reduce the amount of paper consumed, Shadyac gave bicycles as gifts to reduce car usage and the production planted trees near the site in Crozet, Virgina where the movie was filmed as a thank you to the community.

Since it typically costs more money to do the responsible thing, it’s possible this is where most of Evan Almighty’s $250 million budget went. If that’s the case, than I’m a little more hopeful. But it doesn’t hold water when you get down to business. At the end of the day, does the movie entertain? No amount of money for special effects or environmental initiatives are going to offset that. These are all issues anciliary to the point of this kind of entertainment and it’s not a good sign that Almighty is getting more press for this than for the quality of it’s script or the ability of it’s performers.

I guess it’s wait and see.