The Preacher's Wife

Premiered December 13, 1996.

The Preacher's Wife is a remake of The Bishop's Wife, which we reviewed yesterday.  Let's look at this movie's connection to the Academy Awards:

Denzel Washington won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Glory (1990) and later won Best Actor for Training Day (2001).  

Denzel Washington wins his first Oscar on March 26, 1990.

The Preacher's Wife features music by Hans Zimmer, who won an Oscar for his Best Original Score for The Lion King (1995).

It’s also worth noting that Zimmer's music for The Preacher’s Wife received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Music.  

Here's our review:

Reverend Henry Biggs (Courtney B. Vance) is pastor of St. Matthew’s Church, which is located in a neighborhood that has fallen on hard times.  The church itself is also in a state of disrepair and dire financial straits.  

Local predatory real estate mogul Joe Hamilton (Gregory Hines) wants to buy the church so he can replace it with expensive condominiums.  The church’s boiler explodes a week before Christmas and a parishioner is jailed for a crime he didn’t commit.  Henry is being pulled in all directions while trying to save his church and the community. 

Since he’s busy and distracted all the time, Rev. Biggs’ wife Julia (Whitney Houston) feels like Henry has been taking her for granted.  Julia serves as St. Matthew’s choral director and is busy producing its annual Christmas pageant.  

Their son Jeremiah (Justin Pierre Edmund) is upset because his best friend has moved away to live with a foster family.  With so many problems to face, Henry prays to God for help.  

Help arrives in the form of an angel named Dudley (Denzel Washington).  He tells Rev. Biggs he’s the answer to his prayer and that’s he’ll help him manage the church.  

Henry is VERY skeptical when Dudley tells him he’s an angel.  Rev. Biggs comes around when Dudley demonstrates some supernatural abilities, like magically starting Henry’s stalled car.  

Julia is charmed by Dudley and the feeling is mutual.  They spend lots of time together since Henry is always busy, which creates more tension in their marriage.

Joe Hamilton continues to pressure Henry into selling his church to make way for condos.  He says he’ll build a new mega-church for Biggs in exchange for the old church.  Julia believes Joe wants to build the mega-church to be a monument to his own ego.  Hamilton sweetens the deal by promising to pay for a new boiler so that St. Matthew's will be warm during its Christmas services.  

Will Henry sell out to Hamilton?  Can Julia and Henry’s marriage be saved?  Can Dudley’s angelic powers save the day for everyone? 

J.A. Morris says:
This is a good “modern” remake of The Bishop’s Wife (I put “modern” in quotation marks because this movie is now 23 years in the past!).  The stakes are upped a little bit from the original.  In this version, Henry Biggs could lose his church to a wrecking ball, whereas Henry Brougham’s problem was funding construction for his new cathedral (his old church was never in danger).  

While I like both versions, The Preacher’s Wife gives Julia Biggs a little more agency than Julia Brougham.  Whitney Houston’s Julia argues rather forcefully with her husband, something Loretta Young’s character didn’t get to do.  

I mentioned in yesterday’s review that David Niven’s performance as Bishop Brougham was my favorite part of The Bishop’s Wife.  I feel the same way about Courtney B. Vance in the remake.  

While Vance has had a great career, he was not intended to be the “main attraction” in a film that featured Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington.  Vance has to do the heavy lifting here, and (like Niven) he makes Rev. Biggs’ growth and change feel real.  There’s a great scene where, after a long day of work and difficulties at home,  Henry’s car won’t start on a cold December night.  Vance does a great job conveying Henry’s sense of “what now” despair.  

Like Cary Grant before him, Denzel Washington brings a lot of his usual charm and charisma to Dudley.  

Whitney Houston wasn’t a classically trained actor like Vance and Washington, but she holds her own in every scene with them.  

The supporting cast is also strong.  Jenifer Lewis gets some of the funniest lines as Julia’s mother Margueritte.  Loretta Divine is solid aas Henry’s secretary Beverly.  

Gregory Hines is great as the sleazy Joe Hamilton.  Margueritte says that Hamilton is “so oily you could fry chicken” on his smile and Hines makes you believe her!

If there’s anything wrong with The Preacher’s Wife, it’s that I felt it had a few too many musical performances by Whitney Houston.  While I wasn’t a fan of all of her music, she had an amazing voice.  I’m guessing that her singing (and the soundtrack album that accompanied this movie) was a major factor in this film being greenlit.  On a positive note about Houston's songs, I enjoyed the uptempo gospel arrangement of “Joy To The World."

The only other problem I had was that Jenifer Lewis played Whitney Houston’s mother.  While I enjoyed Lewis’ performance in The Preacher’s Wife, she was born only six years before Houston.  This didn’t ruin the movie, but it strained credulity a bit.

The Preacher’s Wife is a good updated remake of a classic Christmas movie and is recommended.  If you’re a huge Whitney Houston fan, you may like it more than I did.

J.A. Morris’ rating:

3 candy canes.  


RigbyMel says: 

I’d never gotten around to watching this version of this story until I started blogging about holiday movies and it was very interesting watching The Preacher’s Wife in proximity to The Bishop’s Wife for this review.    There were differences in emphasis evident from the change in time period to the focus on people of color.  

Some of these differences worked well  -- there were higher stakes in terms of Henry’s church being in disrepair and the subplot involving the teenaged parishioner in danger of being sent to jail for something he didn’t do.   

I also liked the subplot involving the small children -- Jeremiah, who is Henry & Julia’s son in this version, is dealing with his best friend Hakim moving away due to needing foster care.   The resolution here was perhaps a bit obvious,  but it’s a Christmas movie, and it’s sweet so I can’t really complain. 

The choice to make the Hamilton character a predatory real estate developer who holds out the prospect of a shiny new church in a gated community as a temptation to Henry was also a choice that resonated in terms of a more modern sensibility.   Gregory Hines was appropriately unctuous as the developer and I thought it was fascinating that Dudley chose to go for a much more direct A Christmas Carol-style spirit intervention in this version than did the Dudley in the 1940s iteration.  (Which ALSO has the Christmas Carol aspect evident, not quite as blatant.)   

Both the 1940s and 1990s films make music an important aspect of the story development, but due to the inclusion of Whitney Houston, it’s rather more prominent in the later version.   The gospel rendition of “Joy To The World” is truly joyous and is my favorite musical number from The Preacher’s Wife. 

However, some other choices like the decision to use the (admittedly adorable) Jeremiah as the narrator for the proceedings, do not work quite as well as I think the director and/or screenwriter would have hoped.   The narration comes off as ever so slightly cloying at times and feels unnecessary.  

That being said, this remake is an enjoyable take on the classic and worth a look should you have the time or inclination!

RigbyMel’s rating: 

3 candy canes