Film's Music Is Heavenly, But It's Bedeviled By Weak Script, Acting

Date: December 13, 1996
By Terry Lawson, Movie Critic

From Detroit Free Press
Submitted by: Larry A.


'The Preacher's Wife'
* * out of 4 stars
Rated PG; mild language

Denzel Washington plays an angel sent to Earth to restore a minister's flagging faith in "The Preacher's Wife," a family fantasy remake of 1947's "The Bishop's Wife." But the real seraph is Whitney Houston, who, in the title role, enlivens this film like a supermodel crashing a deacon's dinner.

Houston is not yet, and may never be, an actress, and although her pop-soul histrionics thrill millions, she comes off to others as inauthentic and as artificial as an aluminum tree.

Nevertheless, she is "The Preacher's Wife's" primary blessing. Every time the picture starts to drone on like one of the minister's painfully earnest and obvious sermons, Houston saves the service by offering up a rafter-rattling gospel production number. Say amen, everybody.

"The Preacher's Wife" is directed by Penny Marshall, but its real guiding spirit is Washington, a family man who has long wanted to star in a positive-values movie set in the inner city with an African-American cast. If you can't throw the devil out of the 'hood, you can at least field some opposition. Washington also figured playing an angel named Dudley would be a nice change from all those stern, disciplined heroes -- a chance to try out his wings, if you will.

These wings, however, happened to be worn in the original film by Cary Grant, an actor with a comic touch lighter than a snowflake. Washington pays Grant tribute by dressing Dudley in a '40s topcoat and fedora, but in Dudley's case, clothes can't make the man. Washington tries hard to be affably charming and sincere, but barely makes an impression.

The burden of carrying the film is appropriately left to the fine actor Courtney Vance ("The Last Supper," "Panther"), who has the hopeless role of the beleaguered Rev. Henry Biggs, who has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Henry works tirelessly to keep his church and community together, but to little effect. The congregation bequeathed him by his mentor and his wife Julia's late father respects Henry, but has little faith in his leadership. Now Julia is tiring of his woe-is-me attitude and seeing herself and their son Jeremiah (Justin Pierre Edmond) neglected.

But when Henry's prayers for heavenly help are answered and Dudley is dispatched to lend a divine hand, Henry rejects his help. He expected something more, well, practical than a miracle. Dudley is undeterred, and when he persists, Henry pawns him off on Julia and Jeremiah, both of whom respond just a little too eagerly to male attention.

Director Marshall and the scriptwriters who updated the original fable acknowledge Dudley's own struggle to keep his relationship with Julia on a spiritual level, but fail to take advantage of either the comic or romantic possibilities. One problem is a distinct lack of chemistry between the stars, whose reluctance to move beyond looking at each other admirably seems less a reflection of the characters than a tacit admission that they really are responsible actors who are married to other people. If they don't get lost in the fantasy, how can we?

Problem two is the preachiness of the script, which is compelled to address prejudice, families separated by social services and African-American success stories who suck the life from their own communities. (Gregory Hines has the thankless job of representing that faction.) The guilt collection plate gets passed so often that we begin to feel like taking some loot instead of putting more in.

But every time temptation comes a-creeping, Marshall signals for Houston to get back in that choir loft, and even if some of the specially written pop-gospel songs she sings sound almost as plastic as a dashboard Jesus, they come out like pure bliss when compared with all that is wrapped around them.

Even dressed in dowdy prints and plaids, Houston seems to be an unlikely "Preacher's Wife," but when she's making a joyful noise unto the Lord, she gives this well-meaning movie what it otherwise fails to muster: some spirit.