Butler's Cinema Scene

Eddie Murphy

“MR. CHURCH”  My rating: C+

104 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

An opening credit for “Mr. Church” claims that the film was “inspired by a true friendship.”

Actually it seems to have been inspired by every other racially-tinged tearjerker ever made.

Which isn’t to say it doesn’t work, at least part of the time.

Director Bruce Beresford (“Breaker Morant,” “Tender Mercies” and especially “Driving Miss Daisy”) is a skilled enough director to finesse many of the emotional and narrative landmines that litter Susan McMartin’s screenplay, and the performances of Britt Robertson, Natascha McElhone and Eddie Murphy in the title role are good enough that we’re moved…even if we resent it.

The film’s first five minutes unload enough revelations to fill an entire movie.  The time is the mid-’70s, the location Los Angles.

The beautiful Marie Brooks (McElhone) is the single mother to young Charlotte/Charlie (played as a child by Natalie Coughlan).  Charlie awakens one morning to find a rather elegant black man (Murphy) cooking a gourmet breakfast in the kitchen.

Charlotte is informed that the cook, Mr. Church, was bequeathed to Marie by her former lover, a wealthy  married man who before dying specified that Mr. Church work as a cook and caregiver until Marie’s death, and that thereafter he will continue to receive his salary for the rest of his life.

What Charlotte doesn’t know is that her mother is dying of cancer. Thus this unusual gift from her one-time paramour.

Except that Marie hangs in there. Expected to last only six months, she lives for another six years. And Mr. Church faithfully sticks around.

By this time Charlie is a teenager (Britt Robertson, who has the unusual ability to convincing play any age between 16 and 30). She heads to college on the East Coast, but after a year or two turns up on Mr. Church’s doorstep, pretty and pregnant. They resume the unofficial father/daughter relationship that has sustained them for most of Charlie’s life.

Britt Robertson

For much of the film Murphy’s Mr. Church is something of a cipher.  He’s a great cook, a lover of jazz and a reader whose interests range from Thomas Hardy to Agatha Christie.  He passes on his tastes — culinary and literary — to young Charlie.

But where does he go every night when he leaves the Brooks’ home? Does he have a girlfriend? Hobbies?  Passions?

Mr. Brooks is fiercely protective of his privacy, keeping secrets even from his beloved Charlie. (Of course we expect a big revelation…which turns out to be a very modest one. Bit of  a letdown.)

About every 10 minutes “Mr. Church” grabs our tear ducts and twists. You can almost set your clock by the sobs. (And the film relies WAY too much on a voiceover narration by the grown Charlie.)

This emotional circle-jerk-of-life is just effective enough to keep us watching when common sense tells us to bail.

Murphy has been getting considerable ink for tackling a non-comedic role, and he’s perfectly adequate.  None of those patented Murphy traits are in evidence here.

But at best “Mr.  Church” is a guilty pleasure.

| Robert W. Butler