BEFORE: Based on the synopsis, I'm not sure this film qualifies for this week's topic - I mean, who cares, really, it's not like we're saving babies here. Still, I'm going to need a ruling from the judges over whether a film about a surrogate father really counts. We're heading into the big Father's Day weekend, after all, and plot points are important. I'm only halfway through this Eddie Murphy chain and I want to make sure I put the films in the right order so that the most appropriate one lands on Sunday. These little details matter - OK, not really.
Eddie Murphy carries over again from "Boomerang".
THE PLOT: A unique friendship develops when a girl and her dying mother retain the services of a talented cook - Henry Joseph Church. What begins as a six month arrangement instead spans into fifteen years and creates a family bond that lasts forever.
AFTER: The career of Eddie Murphy is full of peaks and valleys, for every "Dreamgirls" there was a "Norbit", and for every "Beverly Hills Cop" there was a "The Golden Child". "Trading Places"? Meet "Best Defense". "Shrek"? Meet "Meet Dave". You see where I'm going, right? None of it was Murphy's fault, he didn't write or direct the terrible films on his resumé, but he did make choices over which films to do. Actors can't possibly predict which films are going to connect with the audiences, though, often they do bear the brunt of the bad press that results from the failures. At some point, however, it feels like Mr. Murphy got a bit more selective, and every couple of years when he was in a "good" movie, it felt like a comeback - only he never really left, did he? He just voiced Donkey again in a "Shrek" sequel and was probably laughing all the way to the bank. Then of course, he disappeared again for a bit after making "Mr. Church" and the real comeback tour started in 2021 with "Coming 2 America".
This ended up being a mostly endearing film about a single mother and her daughter, who end up treating a cook as a member of their family, only to have him do the same in return for Charlie, the daughter, later in the film. But of course, it was designed to pull on our heartstrings from the beginning, because it's all about people who need people to take care of them. I guess that's one reason people have kids in the first place, to take care of them when they're older. But Marie Brooks is a single mother to Charlie, who's 10 years old and nobody's expecting a 10 year old girl to care for her mother when she has breast cancer and maybe 6 months to live. So Marie's former boyfriend (not Charlie's father) hires Mr. Church to cook for them, and Marie ends up living longer than expected, perhaps due to the nutritious and delicious food that Mr. Church cooks, or perhaps it's a desire to stay alive long enough to see her daughter go to prom and graduate from high school.
Mr. Church also instills a love of reading, because he keeps a collection of classic novels at hand at all times, however Mr. Church is also very secretive about his personal life, once dinner has been served and he's off the clock, his life is his own, and we don't really learn anything about that part of his life for a very long time. Once Charlie graduates and is accepted into Boston University, Mr. Church helps her with the gift of a car and tuition money that was supposedly saved from years of using coupons to buy groceries. Only, come on, nobody who saves money at the grocery store actually puts that money aside, they just use it to buy more groceries, right? Even if the bill was less than you thought it would be, you go back and you grab that box of cookies or cereal or that steak you had your eye on, but you thought was too expensive.
Charlie also has to learn to drive, because that's the only way she can afford to get to Boston, by learning to drive that car. (However, NITPICK POINT, it probably takes like a week or longer to drive from L.A. to Boston, and that means 7 nights of motels, 7 days of meals, plus gas, plus any repairs to the car along the way - when you factor all that it, it's probably cheaper to get a plane ticket to Boston, isn't it?). Things go well at Boston University, Charlie's course work seems to be going well, though friends and roommates come and go, somehow she's able to get a part-time job, afford an apartment and still keep up her studies - but then she drives back to L.A. three years later, because she's pregnant. She finds Mr. Church, I guess she knew where he lived because his address was on his letters to her, but still, that's an invasion of the privacy he demanded, for her to just show up on his doorstep.
I don't see why being pregnant precludes Charlie from finishing college, she was just one year away, after all. But she apparently wants to be back home, safe with Mr. Church and getting all up in his personal life. He still wants his privacy, however Charlie can't seem to follow this rule at all. Also there's one night a week where he comes back from the club very drunk and yelling loudly at nothing in particular.
Some things here are very unclear - like, who is the father of Charlie's baby? Obviously some Boston college kid, one she doesn't have any romantic connection to, so also, what is it with women in this family, they have children with men they don't love, also they can't seem to form any romantic relationships that last. Charlie went to prom with Owen, but then nothing really happened between them after that, they re-connected after she came back from Boston, when he was now a doctor in the L.A. area that she took Mr. Church to, but what, no sparks then, either? Also her relationship with Landon (the weird guy who taught her to drive, and also took her to the hospital when she got hit by a skateboarding kid) is another non-starter, so Charlie just chooses to be a single mother like her mother was, because it makes her comfortable? Not really a good enough explanation, unless she's just bad at relationships and gave up.
Fast forward five years and Mr. Church is getting older, and Charlie and her daughter Izzy are still living with him. Charlie works as a waitress in a diner, well, at least that's a job that won't go away. When Mr. Church becomes too ill to cook, Charlie learns that she has the ability to cook, from all those years of watching Mr. Church do it. Umm, great, so why didn't she ever do it before, then? Cooking is a skill that you practice, you learn by doing, you don't learn it just by watching. Even if you watch a hundred YouTube or Instagram videos about how to cook something, you'd learn better by just getting a recipe and following the instructions, you learn from your mistakes as well. Same goes for playing piano, you can't learn it just from watching someone else play, you have to sit at the piano and practice and slowly get better and better.
I just got the ruling back from the judges - this film can NOT count as a Father's Day film, even though Mr. Church acted a bit like Charlie's surrogate father. I've got to limit the topic to fathers and step-fathers and adopted fathers only, father figures not allowed. Yes, the world is full of blended families and adoptive families and all of that is great, but I've got to regard "surrogate father" as an oxymoron here. Sorry.
Directed by Bruce Beresford (director of "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding")
Also starring Britt Robertson (last seen in "Scream 4"), Natascha McElhone (last seen in "Laurel Canyon"), Xavier Samuel (last seen in "Elvis"), Lucy Fry (last seen in "Bright"), Christian Madsen (last seen in "Divergent"), McKenna Grace (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"), Natalie Coughlin, Madison Wolfe (last seen in "On the Road"), Lincoln Melcher, Kathleen McMartin, Sara Shearer, Kelly Lester (last seen in "Your Place or Mine"), Michael Leone, Thom Barry (last seen in "Rules of Engagement"), Dakota Lustick (last seen in "The Holdovers"), Dora Winifred
RATING: 5 out of 10 matchbooks from Jelly's
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