Post by jazzlover on Feb 9, 2007 9:21:26 GMT -5
Eddie Murphy is one of the best movie actors of his generation. Eddie Murphy is a check-cashing hack. Both of these sentences are true, and that's gotta frustrate moviegoers who never know which Eddie they're paying their 9 bucks to see.
Murphy's Oscar nomination for "Dreamgirls" is his first, although it shouldn't be, so it seems odd that he's consolidating that dramatic triumph with "Norbit." The raucous comedy, which opens Friday, finds him — as in the "Nutty Professor" films — vanishing into latex costumes to play several different people. A review of "Norbit" will appear in Friday's Pioneer Press, but I had not seen it in time for this story's deadline. So I'm in the dark about whether Murphy, who has spoken frequently about the pay cut he took to make "Dreamgirls," is Bad Eddie, adding to his bank account (as he did in "Holy Man" and "Pluto Vance"), or Good Eddie, adding to his list of great performances. But I can tell you that if you're looking for the best of Murphy on video, here's where to turn:
"Shrek" (2001): A couple of years ago, I asked a bunch of animation directors about the sharpest casting of stars in animated films and, without exception, they pointed to Murphy's brash, good-hearted Donkey as the best of the best, a character that takes Murphy's persona and then twists it subtly to show us new dimensions of his talent. Says Chris Chase, one of the producers of "Tarzan," "(His) energy just came off the screen, and you know the animators fed off that in a huge way." The wrong star voice can derail a cartoon character, but Donkey/Murphy couldn't be better.
"Bowfinger" (1999): Murphy can slide into smugness. In his worst movies ("Metro," "Vampire in Brooklyn"), you'll catch him swaggering a bit to let us know he's as bored by the material as we are. That is not the problem with "Bowfinger," probably the best movie Murphy has been in and certainly his best performance on-screen. Make that best performances (a Murphy trademark). As a smug, rich, hacky actor snagged in a sex scandal, Murphy (a smug, rich, sometimes hacky actor who has tabloided his way into two sex scandals) is extraordinary, simultaneously acknowledging his mistakes and deftly proving he can rise high above them. Then, as a shy nobody hired to imitate the actor, Murphy turns on the sweetness and wit that made him a star on "Saturday Night Live" 25 years ago.
"The Nutty Professor" (1996): Not to get all Freud on you, but "Nutty" is another role where Murphy seems to be trying to compensate for what a jerk he has been. Aside from the sweetness he brings to his mad-scientist character and the surprising dignity he lends the scientist's mom and dad (both of whom could easily have been offensive caricatures), he is brilliant as lounge lizard Buddy Love. Buddy is nasty, smug and inexplicably confident — not unlike Murphy himself in "Raw" — and the actor dares to make the character so unpleasant that he's hard to watch. Which makes spending time with the seven — count 'em, seven — other characters he plays in "Nutty" that much more fun.
"Beverly Hills Cop" (1984): Murphy doesn't veer far from the guy he played in "48 Hrs." — he shoots, he wisecracks — but his Axel Foley is so appealing that Murphy couldn't resist repeating him in two sequels (a third is on the way) and three that might as well have been sequels: "15 Minutes," "Showtime" and "Metro." Stick with the original, and you can't go wrong.
"48 Hrs." (1982): Not the first buddy comedy, but it established a template without which all the "Lethal Weapons" and "Rush Hours" would be 100 minutes of nothing but car chases and gunfire. Nobody would give a nickel for the cookie-cutter cop-and-robbers plot, but Murphy doing an ear-splitting version of the Police's "Roxanne"? And talking his way out of a redneck bar? Priceless.
Murphy's Oscar nomination for "Dreamgirls" is his first, although it shouldn't be, so it seems odd that he's consolidating that dramatic triumph with "Norbit." The raucous comedy, which opens Friday, finds him — as in the "Nutty Professor" films — vanishing into latex costumes to play several different people. A review of "Norbit" will appear in Friday's Pioneer Press, but I had not seen it in time for this story's deadline. So I'm in the dark about whether Murphy, who has spoken frequently about the pay cut he took to make "Dreamgirls," is Bad Eddie, adding to his bank account (as he did in "Holy Man" and "Pluto Vance"), or Good Eddie, adding to his list of great performances. But I can tell you that if you're looking for the best of Murphy on video, here's where to turn:
"Shrek" (2001): A couple of years ago, I asked a bunch of animation directors about the sharpest casting of stars in animated films and, without exception, they pointed to Murphy's brash, good-hearted Donkey as the best of the best, a character that takes Murphy's persona and then twists it subtly to show us new dimensions of his talent. Says Chris Chase, one of the producers of "Tarzan," "(His) energy just came off the screen, and you know the animators fed off that in a huge way." The wrong star voice can derail a cartoon character, but Donkey/Murphy couldn't be better.
"Bowfinger" (1999): Murphy can slide into smugness. In his worst movies ("Metro," "Vampire in Brooklyn"), you'll catch him swaggering a bit to let us know he's as bored by the material as we are. That is not the problem with "Bowfinger," probably the best movie Murphy has been in and certainly his best performance on-screen. Make that best performances (a Murphy trademark). As a smug, rich, hacky actor snagged in a sex scandal, Murphy (a smug, rich, sometimes hacky actor who has tabloided his way into two sex scandals) is extraordinary, simultaneously acknowledging his mistakes and deftly proving he can rise high above them. Then, as a shy nobody hired to imitate the actor, Murphy turns on the sweetness and wit that made him a star on "Saturday Night Live" 25 years ago.
"The Nutty Professor" (1996): Not to get all Freud on you, but "Nutty" is another role where Murphy seems to be trying to compensate for what a jerk he has been. Aside from the sweetness he brings to his mad-scientist character and the surprising dignity he lends the scientist's mom and dad (both of whom could easily have been offensive caricatures), he is brilliant as lounge lizard Buddy Love. Buddy is nasty, smug and inexplicably confident — not unlike Murphy himself in "Raw" — and the actor dares to make the character so unpleasant that he's hard to watch. Which makes spending time with the seven — count 'em, seven — other characters he plays in "Nutty" that much more fun.
"Beverly Hills Cop" (1984): Murphy doesn't veer far from the guy he played in "48 Hrs." — he shoots, he wisecracks — but his Axel Foley is so appealing that Murphy couldn't resist repeating him in two sequels (a third is on the way) and three that might as well have been sequels: "15 Minutes," "Showtime" and "Metro." Stick with the original, and you can't go wrong.
"48 Hrs." (1982): Not the first buddy comedy, but it established a template without which all the "Lethal Weapons" and "Rush Hours" would be 100 minutes of nothing but car chases and gunfire. Nobody would give a nickel for the cookie-cutter cop-and-robbers plot, but Murphy doing an ear-splitting version of the Police's "Roxanne"? And talking his way out of a redneck bar? Priceless.