IF YOU could be God for a day, what would you do?

Deliver lasting world peace, perhaps? Invent a cure for diseases like cancer or Aids? Provide food for the world's impoverished and starving? In the new Jim Carrey movie Bruce Almighty, a regular Joe is offered the chance to assume the Lord's mantle and reshape the universe in his own image. It's a neat and simple concept, ripe with comic potential, if only the screenwriters knew how to exploit it.

Bruce Nolan (Carrey) is a television reporter in Buffalo, New York who specialises in human interest stories. His viewers love him, as does his loyal girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston), yet Bruce is disenchanted with life and feels there is something missing.

After a terrible day during which one calamity follows another, Bruce snaps and he launches a scathing tirade against God. The Lord answers back, appearing in his human form (Morgan Freeman), bestowing heavenly powers on the news man and challenging him to run the world, if he thinks he's up to the task.

Bruce seizes the opportunity with both hands, and then the fun really begins.

Carrey reverts to his trademark rubber-faced antics. We've seen most of this tomfoolery before and despite the leading man's undeniable charisma, it's hard to marshal anything more than a smile as Bruce abuses his heavenly powers to give Grace multiple orgasms or to wreak revenge on a gang of violent hoods.

Unthinkably, co-star Steven Carell pickpockets the film from Carrey with a dizzying comic turn of his own as the slimy network rival who will do anything to win promotion.

The scene in which he loses control of his speech to Bruce during a live news broadcast, and develops a nasty bout of Tourette's Syndrome, is the closest Bruce Almighty comes to a genuine belly laugh.

Aniston is squandered in a thankless supporting role, but she still shines for her few brief moments on screen, although she comes off second best to her screen pet, a loveable Dalmatian with an annoying habit of urinating on the living room furniture.

That's comedy folks!

Rating: 5/10