The Preacher's Wife (1996)

Because I have been a fan of The Bishop's Wife for so many years, I was never in a rush to check out this mid-'90s remake. I knew I would get around to it one day, Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington in main roles would see to that, but I never made it a priority. Until now. I wish I could say that I enjoyed it, but it pales in comparison to the original film, as well as not really doing good enough in simpler, Christmas movie, terms.

Courtney B. Vance is Reverend Henry Biggs, a man who is struggling with his role. He seems to be stuck in a bit of a rut, unable to truly inspire members of his congregation, and unable to figure out the best way to effectively help the community. He's also not been present in his marriage to Julia (Houston), a young woman who tries to support her husband at all times, and who provides the best singing voice in the church choir. Thankfully, an angel (Dudley, played by Denzel Washington) is sent down to help. Nobody really believes that he is an angel though, and everyone should forget all about him once his work is done. 

Written by Nat Mauldin and Allan Scott, reworking the source material from the Robert Nathan novel and the 1947 movie, The Preacher's Wife should work much better than it does. There are great people in central roles, including Gregory Hines, Jenifer Lewis, and Loretta Devine, and Penny Marshall is the talented director helming the thing. It actually does well, raising a smile here and there, when focusing on the character of Dudley, largely thanks to an absolutely charming performance from Washington helping to keep any negative thoughts at bay. It's also altogether easier to enjoy whenever Houston is lighting up the screen with her presence. Sadly, and somewhat paradoxically, it is dragged down by moments that feel obviously inserted into the plot to give screentime to Houston's singing talent. She has a great voice, no doubt about it, but the whole film screeches to a halt for a few different songs that could easily have been excised in service of much better pacing.

As horrible as it might seem, I could also have done without the horrible performance from the main child star in the cast, Justin Pierre Edmund. Playing Jeremiah Biggs, the son of Henry and Julia, Edmund is just overdoing everything in a film that works best when the cast are allowed to be relatively quiet. He's not alone, this is a film that feels very much like the professional adults were happily giving a chance to amateur youngsters. 

I could heap praise on both Washington and Houston all day long, and I'd kill to just once look as sharply-dressed as the former, but Vance also does really good work, despite the fact that he has the toughest of the three lead roles, as the harried man trying to balance his faith and love with harsh realities. Lewis does well with her role (playing the concerned mother of Houston's character), Devine is left with little to do, but she's someone I tend to enjoy in any role, and Hines has to be the main villain, but suffers from a rushed third act that delivers the expected ending without any of it feeling truly earned. There are also roles for Paul Bates and Lionel Ritchie, the former playing a kind-hearted soul pining for Devine's character and the latter playing, well, Lionel Ritchie.

Some people will be able to enjoy this more than I did, especially those just wanting to hear Whitney Houston sing some songs that aren't in the usual rotation of her many hits, but it's hard to view it as anything other than a huge disappointment. It's also (pleasantly) surprising that nobody has tried to remake it again recently. I wouldn't even mind if they gave Washington another chance in the role of the helpful angel.

4/10

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A Christmas Story 2 (2012)

I liked A Christmas Story when I FINALLY saw it. I liked it quite a bit. But I didn't love it. I hadn't grown up with it playing on a loop every day in December. It just wasn't quite as revered here in the UK, where we don't often have the wished-for white Christmas, and rarely view the season with such naivete and optimism. Whatever your views on the movie, however, there's one thing that we can all probably agree on. It didn't need a sequel. But now, 29 years later, it has one.

Braeden Lemasters plays Ralph Parker this time around, the young boy now an older, but not necessarily wiser, teenager. His father (played by Daniel Stern) still loves to save money wherever he can, and everything feels a bit different but also very much the same. Oh, and it's coming up to Christmas. This is standard sequel stuff.

Directed by Brian Levant, this actually doesn't stink as badly as it should, mainly due to the anecdotal nature of the material being a lot of fun, even if it isn't always as easy to identify with as the material used in the first movie (a clue that they'd already used the best stuff, so had no need to revisit the characters). Yes, it's completely unnecessary, but so are many sequels. The fact that Nat Mauldin, who wrote the script once again based on aspects of Jean Shepherd's book "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash", keeps everything enjoyable is mainly due to the fact that it skips from one incident to the next before you can have time to get bored and/or angry at anything repeated from the first movie.

Stern is okay as the father, but he's not as good as Darren McGavin. He plays his character slightly over the top, providing a much simpler performance because he's easier to like, even while he's being the stern dad (no pun intended). Lemasters is also okay as Ralph, I guess, but he's a character defined by the hair and glasses more than anything else. Those remain in place, so that's half the battle won from the very beginning. Elsewhere, David W. Thompson and David Buehrle are good fun as Ralph's friends, Tiera Skovbye is the coveted Drucilla and Gerard Plunkett plays a car salesman who ends up being owed quite a bit of money from our young, central character.

There's a believability missing from this that the first movie had, but a Christmas movie that doesn't feel quite believable is hardly a rare thing nowadays. It doesn't matter as long as it's enjoyable, and there are times when A Christmas Story 2 is enjoyable. Is it anywhere close to being as good as the original movie? No. But it's an amusing enough diversion, which is more than can be said for some movies that dress up their mediocrity in tinsel and fairy lights.

5/10

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