Slate: Evan is no Noah

David Plotz, who recently blogged the Bible for Slate, writes about Evan Almighty's appalling effort to pander to religious moviegoers. What makes it appalling, according to Plotz, is the way it tries to have it all ways -- to sell it to religious audiences as a parable and to secular services as entertainment. I don't have a problem with the movie's not replicating the devastation of the Noah story (God did promise never to do it again). But I entirely agree that removing any sense of Evan's righteousness or responsibility and any real threat or implication undermines both the meaning and the narrative of the story.