Mr. Church

The role in which Eddie Murphy leaves comedy entirely. At the end of the 1960s a cook is hired for six months to look after a mother with cancer. His name is Mr Church, and a six-month arrangement stretches into years. The girl's childhood, adolescence and adulthood all happen in a house with this man in the kitchen, and he never tells them anything about his own life. Susan McMartin wrote the script from a real person: a cook her mother hired who stayed with the family for years. That is also the film's subject: you can owe someone your entire life and know nothing about them. Where Church goes at night, why he drinks and why he never says are never fully opened. Britt Robertson plays the daughter. Bruce Beresford directed. Worth watching for Murphy's performance. But the script was sharply criticised for repeating, without examining it, the figure of the Black character who serves, and that criticism lands.