Holy Man Parent Guide

Did you ever get a big chocolate bunny for Easter, only to discover it’s just a thin shell of chocolate, and the more you eat, the more you realize how little is really there?

Holy Man suffers from the hollow bunny syndrome. Eddie Murphy plays “G”, a character whose goal is to walk through the script and be a “life toucher”. When Ricky (Jeff Goldblum) and Kate (Kelly Preston), two executives from a failing television shopping channel, are stuck by the side of the road, G strolls up and offers a hand. A series of incidents keeps G in their lives, and Ricky’s initial reluctance to accept G’s help changes after he watches G cure a man’s fear of flying with a couple of minutes of hypnosis during a party. Ricky sees a new future for G.

Put him on TV. After all, if this guy can cure a hardened case of aerophobia, just think how he could move cubic zirconia… Thus the channel’s newest show, The G Spot, is born, and G becomes the god of discount merchandise. He counsels viewers to consider why destruction is more fun than creation by taking a chain saw and cutting furniture into bits. While selling a starfish pendant, G tells of his personal experience watching a girl throwing dying starfish into the sea (a story that’s been told countless times, and an embarrassment to the screenwriter for thinking we’d buy it as being original).

And that leads to the reason this film fails to motivate us to be better. Like the fake jewelry and other useless “necessities” G is expected to sell, his greeting card philosophies are delivered with artificial spirituality—along with an attempt at comedy: “I wept when I saw a man with no shoes… until I met a man who had no penis.”

I think the creators of this film want audiences to learn that love conquers conflict, but unnecessary lines like these distract us into realizing that G is still Eddie Murphy, and may be more appropriately referred to as Hollow Man.

About author

Rod Gustafson

Rod Gustafson has worked in various media industries since 1977. He founded Parent Previews in 1993, and today continues to write and broadcast the reviews in newspapers, on radio and (of course) on the Internet. His efforts also include writing and researching media in all its forms and observing how it effects society and culture. He and his wife Donna have four children.