Mr. Church (2016)

“I had no where to go and for the first time, I realized I had no one.” – Charlie

Number of Times Seen – 1 (3 Nov 2016)

Brief Synopsis – A chef begins to work for a single mother and her daughter and what was meant to be a short term job changes all of their lives for years to come.

My Take on it – I came across this film by accident and had no idea what it was about at all besides the fact that Eddie Murphy was in it.

I have seen most of Eddie Murphy’s movies and just about all of them are some form of a comedy.

He has always excelled at making us laugh (or cry because the performance or story was just terrible), but he rarely showed us how great a dramatic actor he can be.

With this film, Murphy joins the likes of Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Steve Martin and many more comedic actors who have been able to show the world how amazing they can be when given good meaty dramatic roles.

A decade ago, Murphy was the front-runner for an Oscar for his role in Dreamgirls (2006) which was probably the closest he came before this film to showing us his dramatic abilities.

This film is totally carried by the unrecognizable comedian because he makes no jokes, doesn’t attempt to get us to laugh at a funny “adult themed” anecdote and doesn’t even try to get us to crack a smile; his role is purely serious.

His character is quite subtle in everything he does and there is a mysterious aura around him throughout the film because we don’t know anything about him that he doesn’t want us to know.

This film does a wonderful job showing us how a completely platonic friendship could blossom between characters in such a simple way yet still remains very believable.

The mentor-student relationship works really well here and the way things are built up, we feel as if we are gaining wisdom from each interaction and lesson between the two.

This film isn’t perfect, but it does give us an enjoyable time with interesting characters and stays entertaining and engaging the whole time.

I hope Murphy uses this successful role as a springboard for a bunch of serious films where he can show the world how great an actor he really is and just needed the right role to show it all to us.

Bottom Line – Murphy is great here because his role is so subtle. Loved the way the friendship blossoms between the characters so simply yet convincingly.  The mentor-student relationship works quite well here and we feel wiser after each of the life lessons are learned by the characters. Not perfect but still quite enjoyable and entertaining to watch. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – This is the first film Eddie Murphy has done in 4 years. (From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy

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