Although pimped through every possible evangelical outlet (though astutely panned by evangelical James Dobson), Evan Almighty is not doing that well in the box office, nor among evangelicals, the "faith-based" audience Hollywood is trying to reach. Challies has a nice evaluation of this phenomenon:
He points out several problems with the film itself that may have
caused Christians stayed away: the film portrayed conservative
political leaders as corrupt; the statement in the film that God is "in
everything;" the suggestion that God’s primary concern with humans is
random acts of kindness. He also points out some things that happened
before the film’s release: Evan posing like Marilyn Monroe holding down
his robe; Steve Carrell’s body of work doesn’t give confidence that
he’ll play the role well; the film’s director saying he rejects
traditional religion, and so on. Certainly some of these warned
Christians off….But the real problem, I’m sure, is the one Joseph offered first. The studios just do not understand Christians. They think
they know what will appeal to Christians, try to give it to them, and
then find that they’ve failed. Why? Because they don’t know the
audience. They try to appeal to some watered-down, ridiculous notion of
what a Christian is and then are surprised to learn that true
Christians really bear no resemblance to that caricature.
