The Nutty Professor

Viewed August 21, 1999 on video

Is Eddie Murphy one of the most talented actors out there?  Most definitely, though that comment needs to be qualified.  There is no questioning his versatility, energy and charisma, his ability to occupy multiple characters and breathe a lot of life and even a bit of truth into them.  However his impersonations often risk becoming caricatures rather than characters.  Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote an intelligent piece comparing the two Nutty Professors, preferring Jerry Lewis’ performance to Murphy’s.  His reason was that Lewis put his actual persona on the line, bringing to scrutiny his own famous wackiness and pondering what his career and life would be if he were allowed to be the ultra-suave alter ego he portrays.  Murphy is neither obese nor oversexed, so there isn’t the personal investment in either Jeckyll or Hyde role that we see in Lewis’ version, but this is still the best work Murphy has done is over a decade at least, and it really got me excited to think what this actor can accomplish if he puts more of himself on the line.  I think what is noteworthy is that Murphy in his multiple roles could have been a lot more cartoonishly over the top and out of control but chose to seek the essence of each role he played (his Richard Simmons riff is almost impossible to distinguish from the original).  The Buddy Love character, as pure id, was probably the easiest for him to play.  The family members were, basically, his family members.  It is Sherman Klump that lets Murphy show his capacity for sensitivity.  He doesn’t do it all the time ­ sometimes his face settles for Chaplinesque expressions of pathos ­ but sometimes, in some unexpected sound in his laugh or just the look on his heavily padded face, he makes the character his own, truly.  The next step for him is to bring more of himself in the character ­ Murphy remains one of Hollywood’s most elusive stars, quite the opposite to Tom Cruise, who constantly tears his soul out onscreen ­ to have us behold how little is actually in there ­ Murphy has yet to show what he is.  I call him on this only because of what I saw many years ago on SNL, a man who seemed to conceal a lot of rage at society, at white folk, and always seemed on the brink of just throwing down with his enraptured audience.  It’s that tension that I miss about Eddie Murphy, and Buddy Love’s unbridled libido has almost no connection to that.  I hope to see it again, mixed with some of his newfound tenderness through Klump.

  As for the rest of the movie: The guy who played the sycophantic store clerk to Richard Gere in Pretty Woman is here in full effect, and he is marvelously shallow, with averted eyes and a precision deadpan delivery oiled by greed.  Jada Pinkett has a rather hapless role as the generic woman-object left in the dark throughout a man’s personal dilemma.  Let’s face it: the movie is Murphy’s, so credit him for making it work, in the midst of flying gerbils, flatulence and flab.

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