Goldblum is stressed, not just because of the flat tire, but because his stereotypically greedy and grasping CEO boss, Robert Loggia, will soon fire Goldblum unless his shows move more merchandise. And also because Goldblum is trying to score a date with Preston, but she remains elusive.
Anyone who has seen a movie before will not be at all surprised as Murphy comes into Goldblum's life, and, through appearances on his television shows, saves Goldblum's job and facilitates a relationship between Goldblum and Preston, neither of whom is inconveniently attached to anyone else.
All the while, Murphy remains mysterious. Is he as simple as he appears, or, like Peter Seller's Chauncey Gardiner from Being There (1979), are his origins possibly divine?
How others will see it. In 1998, Eddie Murphy was still riding high from the success of The Nutty Professor (1996). That film undoubtedly greenlit the present film, but they have little in common aside from starring Murphy. In this one, laughs are rare, and a captive viewer is reduced to predicting the next plot turn, which turns out to be an all too easy task.
Not quite bad enough to earn any Razzie nominations, the movie was instead ignored altogether by the festival circuit. Today at imdb.com, the user rating is a mere 5 out of 10, and the 21K user vote total is middling at best for a 1998 film featuring two A-list stars.
The user reviews tend to forgive Murphy, and in some cases actually praise his performance. They are more critical of Goldblum, who appears onscreen more often than Murphy, and has a less likable character, although of course he transforms from selfish to selfless by film's end, thus winning the heart of Kelly Preston, who must be a good person because she is beautiful.
The more insightful reviews that pan the film put the blame not on its overpaid leads, but on the director and writer, both Hollywood veterans with a number of tepid (but commercially successful) films under their belts.
How I felt about it. Leo Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina" has the famous opening sentence "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Similarly, one could state that all bad comedies are alike, and every good comedy is good in its own way. This may be a sweeping generalization, but it is undeniable that there are many formulaic film comedies, and they are bad all too often.
Holy Man is a bad movie. It is bad for reasons beyond the workmanlike screenplay and direction. First of all, it is bad because its romance is shallow. Goldblum pursues Preston because she is a beautiful woman at arm's length at work, and not because her soul is unduly concerned for the physical and spiritual well-being of Eddie Murphy.
But Preston can't have a romance with Murphy, because he is a spiritual entity who only looks like a man. He has no need for her love anyway. He's doing just fine. Since Kelly Preston is beautiful, and this is a film, she must have a relationship with someone. Loggia is a complete jerk, as is Goldblum's rival Jon Cryer, and although there are myriad other men at the television network, none have a rank high enough to merit her interest. Thus, she is obligated to end up with Goldblum who, as the lead in a comedy, must also end up paired with someone.
We suspect all along that Murphy, similar to Nick Nolte in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, is not the hapless homeless person he appears to be. But in that movie, we find out that Nolte is a con artist, in entertaining fashion. Alas, in Holy Man, Murphy instead turns out to be an all-knowing demigod, who for some reason is putting on his show for the benefit of one person, Jeff Goldblum, even though Goldblum is only using Murphy to gain the romantic interest of Preston and/or keep his high-paying job at the television station.
The plot of the film is that demigod Murphy uses his powers to become a media star as a means to enable Goldblum's character turn from crass to kindly. One has to wonder, is the effort worth the outcome? Or is it like Doc Brown's gigantic machine in Back To The Future, Part Three that churns and churns only to produce a single ice cube.