1996, d. Penny Marshall - Disney+
The thing about The Preacher's Wife is that the role Washington plays -- the angel Dudley -- may share the same name and vocation as the role played by Grant almost fifty years earlier in The Bishop's Wife, but they are not the same character. Just for starters, Washington's Dudley used to be human, and apparently not that all that long ago (possibly within the 20th century). He's been in the queue for an assignment on Earth for decades apparently and has finally been given a shot, to which he is absolutely elated. Grant's Dudley has been on assignment for millennia, apparently, he's seen it all and has an omnipotence that Washington's character doesn't.
These (and other) differences aren't trivial, they shape the roles they play quite differently, and there's really no mistaking them for the same character. The same can be said for the rest of the players in the film. The titular Bishop and his wife are Henry and Julia, as are the titular Preacher and his wife, but that's where the similarities end.
The Preacher's Wife doesn't just redo what was done before beat by beat, note by note, it rebuilds the story and characters from the ground up.
Where Bishop Henry had already moved on from his troubled parish and was having difficulties negotiating the building of a new place of worship, here the Reverend Henry (Courtney B. Vance, Final Destination 5) is still very much in his parish, and a core part of his community. But his troubles are that he cannot do enough to stop the troubles his community is having. The local youth shelter has closed down, the church is in financial straights while still well attended, the local orphanage has closed and Henry's son's best friend is being moved to be housed elsewhere, and a local youth he's helped before has been falsely accused of armed robbery. All these things, as well as just supporting the sick and elderly and destitute in his community, weigh on the Reverend, and these troubles wind up isolating him from Julia (Whitney Houston, The Bodyguard) and his 6-year-old son Jeremiah (Justin Pierre Edmund, in an absolutely adorable but so not saccharine or precocious performance).
Unlike Julia in The Bishop's Wife, here, naturally, the role has been bolstered to put Houston in the spotlight, and, of course, get her to use her greatest talent. There is a lot of Houston singing here, largely gospel, but a sequence of Dudley, as Henry's behest, taking Julia out dancing leads to Julia meeting an old friend (played by Lionel Richie) and goading her into performing a soulful, romantic ballad, which she of course nails, and sends Dudley swooning. It's their return from this event that both sparks their attraction, but also fuels Henry's jealousy, both in a way that was never quite as present or potent in the original.
Henry here is being tempted away from his parish, his community by real estate mogul Joe Hamilton ("Than man is so oily you can fry chicken on his smile") as played by Gregory Hines (Wolfen). Hamilton wants to gentrify the neighborhood and upscale the church, with Reverend Henry becoming a broadcast-worthy preacher. As other members of the community start to fall under Hamilton's sway, so too does Henry, much to Julia's dismay.
Here, Julia doesn't want to just be Henry's wife, but his partner. Most of her input is subtle, punching up the choir and helping with distributing alms. But she has ideas, ideas that Henry doesn't even have time to hear in order to dismiss them. He's put her on the back burner, and it's the crux of the whole film... sort of.
And this is what I mean by The Preacher's Wife being the perfect remake on paper. It rebuilds the story, the characters, the world and it feels so rich and alive, and yet it also repeats so many of the problems of the original when it most certainly could have improved upon them. The biggest issue is about focus and perspective. Whose story is this? Dudley's? Julia's? Henry's? Jeremiah is our narrator, so is it his? This lack of focus once again makes it tough for the story to ever really click. Where Henry in the original was very much the third lead of the film, he's pretty much the primary here, but this means Dudley winds up disappearing for stretches, and used inefficiently.
Both films lack a strong central lesson that Dudley is trying to teach Henry... or maybe it's just that Dudley is a terrible teacher. Dudley is just there to help, but he should be helping Henry help himself, and in both films, too much is left to Dudley to directly intervene. Just as in The Bishop's Wife, here the reconciliation between Henry and Julia is kind of just one moment and doesn't feel big enough to hand-wave away the problems they were having. There's not enough grown-ups having conversations saying how they really feel and understanding each other to feel truly satisfying.
Also in both films, the romance, if you can call it that, between Dudley and Julia, is barely a thing. It's more of a thing in The Preacher's Wife (Julia tells her mom she's just window shopping, to which her mom says "Well, don't go shopping with money in your pocket! And you better not be putting anything in the layaway plan, either!" The incomparable Jennifer Lewis, everyone! Amazing in this film. She's also only 6 year older than Whitney, playing her mother...tsk tsk).
The Preacher's Wife, I think, is a more engaging film than The Bishops Wife, but only by a narrow margin. They're complimentary in their own way, like they're in a shared universe where angels are sent to Earth to help, and these two angels just happen to have similar missions but in two very different communities and with very different people. Where I don't quite click with The Preacher's Wife is its increased focus of faith and devotion and worship. Gospel isn't really my thing, and, quite frankly Whiney's singing never was either. Since both are given such prominence, it's really the detractor for me when comparing the two. One's mileage may vary greatly on that front.
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