back in the early years of his career , eddie murphy was afflicted with what roger ebert termed " star magic syndrome " , where a hot young star is shoved blindly into one ill-conceived production after another , in the hopes that name-brand recognition will make up for shoddy writing or inept concepts . after the surefooted fun of doctor doolittle and the nutty professor , holy man is a step back to the golden child for murphy . murphy plays a guru/swami-type figure named g ( yes , just " g " -- [g]andhi ? [g]autama ? we never find out ) , whose idea of mysticism is parlor tricks and whose expoundings on philosophy are torn wholesale from sub-robert bly self-help books . he's the kind of character that desperately needs an edge , a twist . i kept thinking back to my own readings on zen buddhism , in which the masters slapped their disciples around mercilessly , insulted them , posed impossible riddles , and did all kinds of other off-the-wall things in the name of enlightenment . no two ways about it : g is boring . g wanders into the lives of two tv execs ( jeff goldblum and kelly preston ) , who are the manufactured romance for the movie . they're a little unnerved by this guy , even when he repairs the flat tires on their car . every time they look at g , their faces seem to say something like : " what if he's one of those wackos who insinuates themselves into your life and kills your dog ? " now right there is something more interesting than anything that actually happens in the movie . see , the execs are in charge of a rapidly-failing home shopping network which hawks various utterly unsellable products . they desperately need to revamp things . one day , on a whim , g wanders onto the set and does his thing -- and suddenly , merchandise is blowing out the door ! this guy's a kick-butt salesman ! this leads to him getting his own show ( named , with agonizing predictability , " the g spot " ) . why isn't any of this funny ? probably because we can see it coming a billion miles away . nothing happens in this movies because it's human nature -- certainly not the cardboard romance , which has preston and goldblum fighting , making up and getting back together in scenes of leaden predictability . and g isn't a counterpoint to anything : he's his own straight man . he has a bunch of unedifying little speeches and one long one that's not only unedifying , but dishonest , because it's a parable that we've heard way too many times before . the writer , tom schulman , has indulged in this kind of sappiness before . he penned the insufferable dead poets society , which indulged in the insincere fiction that poetry and writing need to be " sold " to students with flashy technique instead of cherished on their own . here , he's no better : he gives g nothing of importance to do , surrounds him with a setup that's bloodless and uninvolving , and fills his mouth with thimble-deep pop-psych blather . suggestions for the rewrite : either ditch the romance or make it more bloodthirsty . and as for g , give him some actual attitude instead of just a smile . here's one role where eddie murphy should actually have let the more scatological , scabrous side of his personality out of the closet . failing that , maybe they should have case chris tucker . he would have been funny just standing there in swami pajamas . 
