Reverend Henry Biggs is the pastor of a small struggling African American Baptist church in a poverty-stricken neighborhood of New York City.
Unsure that he can make a difference in his parishioners' lives and beginning to lose his faith, Henry prays to God for help, which comes in the form of Dudley, a witty and debonair angel.
With Christmas approaching, Henry's schedule becomes increasingly burdensome, and Dudley begins to spend most of his time with Julia and Jeremiah.
Interior sets were constructed at Chelsea Piers, a film and television production facility in Manhattan, New York.
While filming exteriors and interiors at a church and parsonage in Yonkers, New York, a building a block away caught fire and two children died.
[11] Stephen Holden, writing for The New York Times, called the film "sweetly uplifting" and "a shrewdly conceived update", and had high praise for actress Jenifer Lewis and the funny scene where the children in the Christmas pageant cannot recall their lines.
[13] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times also found the film "warm, sentimental, amusing yet serious" and an "inspired reworking" of the 1947 original.
He singled out Penny Marshall's directing for being "consistently wise and judicious", and praised Jenifer Lewis and Loretta Devine.
[10] Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, but was a bit equivocal in his review, concluding: "The Preacher's Wife is a sweet and good-hearted comedy about the holiday season.
Although he found it heart-warming, he wrote that it had a "patchy narrative" and felt the film made Washington and Houston such great characters that it was hard to see why the Biggs' marriage should survive.
Too often, he concluded, the plot seemed nothing more than a means of stringing together terrific musical performances by Houston and the Georgia Mass Choir.
Byrge found Penny Marshall's directing slow at times but felt that casting director Paula Herold had done wonders.
He singled out Courtney B. Vance as an appealing if downbeat husband, Jenifer Lewis as the "sassy" mother-in-law, and Loretta Devine as Bigg's defensive, aggressive secretary who thinks Dudley is there to replace her.
[15] In contrast, Caren Weiner Campbell, writing for Entertainment Weekly, found Denzel Washington to be lackluster (though the gospel singing scenes were quite good).
While she had high praise for Denzel Washington (he "plays Dudley with a 100-watt smile and childlike sense of wonder"), she had little to say for Penny Marshall's directing.
It was, she concluded, slow and the overall tone of the film "strangely solemn"—with only minor relief given by Jenifer Lewis' biting, scathingly funny turn as a tart-tongued mother.
The site's consensus states: "Solid performances and a steady directorial hand help The Preacher's Wife offer some reliably heartwarming – albeit fairly predictable – holiday cheer.
"[18] The film grossed $56,432,646 worldwide, of which $48,102,795 was in the US, ranking The Preacher's Wife as #33 in domestic box office receipts for movies released in 1996.
Industry insiders had hoped that The Preacher's Wife would attract a significant crossover audience due to its two high-profile mainstream stars and heavily promoted soundtrack album.