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Recasting a Classic Celestial Fantasy
The Preacher's Wife, starring Denzel Washington, Whitney
Houston, and Courtney B. Vance; directed by Penny Marshall
As was true of The Bishop's Wife, the Cary Grant-Loretta
Young classic on which this new Denzel
Washington-Whitney
Houston
vehicle is based, the story is little more than a calculated bit of
whimsy. A suave, quasi-seductive angel (Washington) comes to Earth
at Christmastime to restore hope to the household of a melancholy
clergyman (Courtney B. Vance) and his neglected wife (Houston). Songs
have been added--the wife is now an inner-city gospel singer,
and can sure belt out a tune--and things that were once ambiguous
are spelled out. Where Cary Grant's angelic identity was more a thing to
be guessed at, in Denzel's case there's no mistaking it.
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Director Penny
Marshall, working from a script by Nat Mauldin and Allan Scott,
gives the new version a strong flavor of contemporary urban life, and in
particular, nineties black culture. There's a detour through a jazz
club, where the angel (at the request of the exhausted preacher) takes
the wife for a night on the town--giving Houston still another
chance to sing--and there's a bit of satire encircling the sharp,
diabolical real estate huckster played by Gregory Hines. The brand-new
planned community he's developing in the suburbs is a glossy threat to
the homier, humbler, but closer-knit neighborhood community the preacher
and his wife are trying with all their might to preserve.
Although the performances are charming, the story can't escape a
clinging dullness at its heart. The preacher is amazingly stubborn about
refusing the angel's help--he persists in his disbelief that his
prayers for help have been answered, against all reason, for most of the movie. The angel, for his part,
muddies his own mission by seeming to fall in love (understandably, but
to no interesting or even dramatic effect) with the preacher's wife.
Mr. Showbiz rating: 62
Celestial fantasy, like tennis, needs sharply defined rules and a quick,
high-energy delivery if it's to work at all--and The Preacher's
Wife seems content to drift, overdoing the few bits of tension at
its disposal. Even so--if one must do remakes of old Cary Grant
classics--the filmmakers have found a healthy, viable way by
recreating the roles in terms of contemporary African-Americans.
Despite the drawbacks in the writing, the mere act of casting recharges
these otherwise-stale roles with fresh, authentic new life. Denzel
Washington makes a great angel: he has a radiant sweetness that relieves
the dull moviemaking. Whitney Houston's songs infuse her scenes with a
much-needed oxygen, and Courtney B. Vance makes us feel the depth
of this preacher's melancholy. The need for miracles is made palpable,
even if it doesn't quite arrive in the form of a well-told story.
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