When the mother dies and leaves her little daughter alone, everything seems very bad. The story began in Los Angeles in 1965, when the mother died and left her single daughter without a companion or a shepherd. A black cook comes to live at home with that girl and the girl's life begins to change when the cook lives with her in one house. The girl may live until she grows up and looks at that life that has changed forever since the arrival of that black man by chance.
Murphy's low-key but affecting performance is filled with loaded and loving glances. And the restraint becomes the 55-year-old star. If only the film were better.
After helming this, an episode of Roots and Best Picture-winner Driving Miss Daisy, Beresford should be forced to join 'Subservient Cinematic Negroes Anonymous.'
Murphy's understated portrayal is a highlight in an otherwise heavy-handed examination of the way in which troubled souls come together to form surrogate families.
Murphy is fine as the title character, although his performance consists mostly of suppressing all of his usual shtick. He certainly doesn't endow Mr. Church with any unexpected depths. But then neither does the script.
Somehow Murphy manages to lift his dignified, all-knowing servant character off the page, giving a meticulously composed performance in a vehicle that can't help but feel superficially repackaged.
There are several things to like about a quiet drama like Mr. Church. But the thing that feels most notable about director Bruce Beresford's story of a young woman and her unique father figure is the presence of Eddie Murphy in the title role.
It's repugnant for its dehumanizing view (however unintentionally so) of a black man, and repugnant for its emptying-out of one of the great black performers of the time into a sanitized symbol of acceptable blackness.
