On this day in comedy on October 9, 1998 Holy Man was released by Buena Vista Pictures.
Starring Eddie Murphy as a smiling, happy, white robe-wearing fellow enlisted by two TV executives to help sales, Holy Man skewers the home shopping field. Jeff Goldblum is the exec out of ideas and so Kelly Preston is brought in to help him out. They don’t like each other at first until they run across Murphy who somehow makes everybody feel good by the sheer will of his positive personality. Once he’s seen on their low rated shopping show items start selling out and it’s obvious it’s because of Murphy. Soon the decision is made to give him his own show, nut by the time it’s set to debut Murphy’s happy guy has grown weary of all the fans and attention. He’s now unhappy man and in efforts to set things right Goldblum cancels the show and Murphy goes back to anonymity and happiness.
Misdirected by Stephen Herek, Holy Man was a critical failure. The film is loaded with cameos from the likes of James Brown, Betty White, Dan Marino, Soupy Sales and others, but it just didn’t connect with audiences. Even Murphy blasted it publicly as being a “horrendous movie”.
Holy Man grossed $12,069,719 at the domestic box office on a budget of $60 million dollars.
By Darryl “D’Militant” Littleton
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