Imagine, if you will, Eddie Murphy in a role that is totally absent of any of the sly wisecracking that brought him to fame on the small and big screens back in the day.

Meet <em>Mr. Church</em>

In this 2016 family drama (yes, I am going back to movies I’ve missed on various streaming platforms, such as Hoopla digital, which I access free with my library card) Murphy plays a mysterious man who cooks who shows up one day in the breakfast kitchen of a mother and daughter.

It seems his culinary services were willed to them <em>forever</em> by the woman’s recently passed lover.

The older woman agrees with the arrangement much more quickly than the kid.

She, you see, has cancer, of which her daughter does not know.

No more spoilers except to say that Murphy can indeed play wise and cranky quite well.

Directed by Bruce Beresford from a screenplay by Susan McMartin, this will make you sad, glad and sad again.