Hot Property

Real estate and a hit soundtrack — what Xmas is all about.

By Cindy Fuchs

The Preacher's Wife

Directed by Penny Marshall

A Touchstone Pictures Release

Opening Friday, Dec. 13 at area theaters

The Preacher's Wife is about property. Or, to be more precise, it's about real estate deals, wedding vows and recording contracts.

The real estate angle is old hat. Most Christmas movies are concerned with deals over land, houses, banks and loans, sometimes as metaphors for the more abstract and spiritual stuff that "really" matters, like love, faith and hope. In It's A Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart battles Lionel Barrymore over who gets to own their town; in Miracle on 34th Street, Natalie Wood and her mom Maureen O'Hara know that Kris Kringle is real because he delivers their dream house, complete with fireplace; in Holiday Inn, Bing Crosby risks losing the girl because he's such a domestic fuddydud, determined to make a go of his Connecticut boarding house; and in The Bishop's Wife — the 1947 movie on which Preacher's Wife is based — the bishop played by David Niven almost loses his church due to financial crunching, until his faith is reinforced by a visit from an angel (Cary Grant).

At this level, this "heartwarming comedy" — directed by that most heartwarming of K-Mart pitch people, Penny Marshall — takes its cue directly from its source, somewhat revised to accommodate a black cast. Instead of the Catholic bishop, we have the Rev. Henry Biggs (Courtney B. Vance). He spends much of his time mulling over an offer to sell his church to developer Joe Hamilton (Gregory Hines), and the basic conflict is presented as local neighborhood versus selfish entrepreneur. The community is shown preparing for the annual Xmas play and repairing the dilapidated building. By contrast, Joe is shown in scuzzy TV ads, presiding over a corporate boardroom and living alone in a big mansion with white columns, a white piano and a huge white Christmas tree.

At the level of family management, the film is slightly less formulaic. When Henry prays for "help," the Lord delivers an angel named Dudley (Denzel Washington). Dudley is, like the angels in Wim Wenders'Wings of Desire, rather taken by his corporeal incarnation: he frolics in the snow with the Biggs' son (Justin Pierre Edmund), wolfs down pizza and hotdogs, and, eventually, finds himself attracted to Henry's beautiful wife, Julia (Whitney Houston in the Loretta Young part). The angel spends some quality time with the preacher's wife: they go ice-skating and to a nightclub (where Julia "reluctantly" takes the stage to sing a perfectly arranged love ballad, accompanied on piano by Lionel Richie, apparently returned from his recent trip to all-washed-up land).

Dudley's dilemma raises the ante for the family-as-property plot, in that what's at stake for the Biggses is not only their church and faith, but their own carnal desires (Henry's all wrapped up in himself, Julia wants Henry, but she's intrigued by Dudley, not knowing he's an angel). Neither of them seem able to express such desires. And Dudley is, of course, way too polite — being an angel — to ever take up this question of his desire with the woman herself: he only discusses it with her mother (Jenifer Lewis) and Henry.

There's a certain humor implicit in Dudley and Julia's inability to say what they want (in the original film, it was more about Young's self-restraint, as Grant remained pretty suave and removed throughout). Yet, this humor is strangely displaced onto the movie's more general anxieties about carnal desires. This anxiety is most evident in its "fat-jokes": two characters bear the brunt of this visual and verbal (and juvenile) "comedy," Henry's assistant (Loretta Devine) and friend (Paul Bates), and they are, it seems, destined to hook up because they share the same body type (one which the protagonists would likely never have because they're all into self-denial).

Which brings me to the film's most obviously valuable property, Whitney Houston. She's always working — quite brilliantly, you could say — a line between self-denial (for instance, being stoic about her "bad boy" husband Bobby Brown) and absolute, excessive and self-declared queendom. According to the movie's tie-in CD, she's "Starring in the Soundtrack Event of the Year." While it sounds like standard promotional overstatement, it makes sense: even if Washington has top billing, our Miss Thing is the film's (and the CD's) major asset, no question.

Houston's status has, appropriately, precious little to do with what she does on screen. Maybe she is, as Entertainment Weekly says, "more comfortable" here than in The Bodyguard and Waiting to Exhale, but who cares? The point is, she sells records, she solicits curiosity, she always looks impeccable. As Julia, Houston is perfectly cast. She looks supportive and conservative: no gowns or major jewelry here. Rather, she wears chaste choir robes or woolly winter caps and charming ankle-boots like Sonja Henie used to wear. True, her makeup is flawless and she does seem to have a change of jacket or coat for most every scene. But you know, it's hard to keep a good diva down.