Holy Man (M)

Reviewed by PETER CALDER

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Jeff Goldblum, Kelly Preston

Director: Stephen Herek

Don't be deceived by the moment in the trailer when Murphy turns up the voltage surging through anti-aging electrodes attached to Morgan Fairchild's face. That -- and perhaps a brief scene in which couch potatoes all over America bury their noses in their front lawns -- are the only two glimmers of comic life in a film so witless, patronising and interminable that it is extraordinary it ever got past the long lunch at which the idea was first pitched.

Murphy's genuine comic talent is utterly swamped in this mindless sludge. He plays G, the holy pilgrim of the title who materialises on the side of a Miami freeway where Ricky Hayman (Goldblum) is changing a flat tyre.

Hayman is the chief executive of the Good Buy television shopping channel, whose job is threatened by flat sales figures. He is forced to work with marketing whizz Kate Newell (Preston). They hate each other so you know they're going to fall in love.

G (his pilgrimage delayed by a device which looks like it was made up on the day rather than scripted) wanders onto the set of the shopping channel and his homespun platitudes set the phones ringing.

This is the cue for a unsubtle anti-consumerist homily which is as condescending as it is unentertaining -- and a romantic subplot which is just plain dumb.

Herek, whose track record includes other heavy-handed drivel such as Mr Holland's Opus and The Mighty Ducks, has the dubious distinction of trying to make Murphy a straight man in a film which is like Being There without the irony. Everyone looks even more bored than you will be.

A one-star rating overstates its merits.

-- Weekend TimeOut, 14/11/98