Parents' Guide to Evan Almighty

While the gags are cartoonish, the message seems straight out of an environmentally conscious Sunday School. John Goodman, playing a senior congressman, is -- to nobody's surprise -- actually a greedy villain whose allies include shady land developers who hate it when natural resources get in the way of profit. Not exactly the most groundbreaking political problem for God's instrument to solve. Despite the movie's disappointingly lackluster story, kids will get a kick out of the animal antics and old-fashioned ark-building lessons. Llamas spitting green bile on greedy politicos? Now that's inspiring.

Compared to the first "Almighty" comedy, Evan doesn't seem as obvious an instrument for God (again played by Morgan Freeman) and his all-knowing lessons as Bruce, who had plenty of complaints to shoot in the Almighty's direction. The laughs, of course, are what you'd expect: lots of species and feces jokes, an overlong montage of Evan hurting himself while playing This Old House with the ark, and endless digs at Evan's appearance, which goes from clean-cut to grizzly man to white-bearded prophet in just a few scenes. Even the cameos are predictable, like Carell pals Jon Stewart, Ed Helms, and Rachael Harris.