I love the original classic Hollywood movie “The Bishop’s Wife” which starred Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven, on which this remake was based and really hoped that this feature, directed by the recently deceased Penny Marshall, would give me as much enjoyment as the original this Christmas.

Sadly for me it didn’t. It should have worked, with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston heading the cast but somehow it just never took off. Transplanting the action up to date to a poor black neighbourhood where kids can get mistakenly arrested and convicted just for being on the periphery of a crime scene should have worked as should the injection of Yuletide evangelical fervour as Houston whips her gospel choir into shape, but it doesn’t.

Denzel Washington is dapperly dressed as the fallen angel Dudley, who gets his chance to do a good deed on earth at Christmas time for his boss upstairs and gets to smile beneficently in almost every scene he’s in but for all this you never get the sense that he and Houston are ever going to have a mad passionate affair together. Similarly I didn’t detect any real underlying matrimonial tenderness between Houston and her hard-pressed preacher husband, played by Courtney B Vance. The common factor here, I hate to say it, is Whitney, who while she sings throughout with fervour, just doesn’t bring her wife and mother character to life. Vance is better in his part but even at the end when all is put right in the world, you still don’t feel there’s any demonstrable rekindled passion between them.

As for the rest of the cast, they never rise above two-dimensional caricature like Gregory Hines’ avaricious property developer, or the couple’s cutesy kid from whose perspective the story is told. The musical numbers are fine as you’d expect with Houston at the centre of them but even Dudley’s little miracles pass by almost unnoticed, in particular the well-remembered Grant and Young skating scene from the original isn’t even attempted.

At over two hours, it goes on too long and just lacks that magical effervescence and depth of feeling which go toward making a Christmas classic movie. Go back 50 years and try to catch the predecessor, that one will leave you with a warm seasonal glow.