A mysterious saintly man named G (Eddie Murphy) befriends the director of a failing shopping network (Jeff Goldblum) & his colleague (Kelly Preston) in Miami. He becomes a curious sensation on the network.

"Holy Man" (1998) combines elements of "Michael" (1996) and "City of Angels" (1998) to forge its own hybrid and is the obvious precursor to "Bruce Almighty" (2003). It failed at the box office mainly because people thought it was going to be a typical Eddie Murphy vehicle, but it's not. Sure, there's some comedy, but it's decidedly low-key with maybe 2-3 laugh-out-loud parts. It's more of an amusing drama crossed with spiritual docudrama and the unique tone turned people off.

While it's the least of those three other films, it possesses its own appeal once you catch a grip. The movie seems overlong though and needed tightened up with a rewrite. Still, it has its points of interest. Murphy, for instance, is thoroughly convincing in the title role and his character is certainly intriguing (I think it's obvious who he really is), not to mention the flick conveys several valuable insights.

The film runs 1 hour, 54 minutes and was shot in Miami, Florida.

GRADE: C+/B-

This has laughs! I think the screenplay is good, Jeff and Kelly have good chemistry, A GREAT CAST of 80's tv comedy and character actors. Eddie Murphy's character is a bit underplayed maybe.

Now here's a movie where the problem is in the wrong way that people look at it, and receive it.

It's about the condition of truthfulness in our contemporary materialistic world, showing that the truthful man isn't the one who doesn't lie at all, because that's hard to happen, but he's the one who lies less than the others.

I liked selecting the field of advertisement to make the whole movie in it. This world of unceasing commercials was an epitome of the world that we live of shiny seductive fibs, where everything is a commodity that has to be sold anyway, anyhow, with or without credibility; which can be sold also accompanied by any bad commodity. This environment created the perfect irony with the main issue.

But I liked more and more the confidential talk between the lead / the manager of the advertising channel and god in the bathroom. It became the only place where he can be alone with his conscience, away from all the people's dirt; or the bigger bathroom; which can't have a way to empty all of its uncountable lies. It's one sharp, so sarcastic, paradox that introduces the toilet as less filthy than that huge liar world around. So when toilets become the only holy place in our world, then what kind of "filthy" world we live indeed?! This summarizes the serious character of this movie which was wrongly understood as yet another comedy for (Eddie Murphy) while it's wholly not.

It's a movie that asks what's holy nowadays. And according to its nice story, there is surely no 100 % holy men at all. Only holy thoughts. The greatest of them all is being truthful. That's holy enough.. just if you can do it.