Post by StevePulaski on Sept 29, 2016 12:38:02 GMT -5
The Nutty Professor (1996)
Directed by: Tom Shadyac
Directed by: Tom Shadyac
Eddie Murphy's Sherman Klump brings his girlfriend Carla Purty (Jada Pinkett) over for dinner in The Nutty Professor.
Rating: ★★★
God help me, did I laugh during The Nutty Professor, which may indeed be Eddie Murphy's tour-de-force as an actor. Anyone who dislikes the film on any level must at least muster the gall to acknowledge what a renaissance man Murphy is throughout the entire course of this picture, playing no less than seven roles and essentially arguing and battling with himself for the entirety of ninety-five minutes. In many ways, The Nutty Professor is assembled upon the building blocks of comedy, all while accentuating arguably the best performance by any comedian of the 1990s decade.
Let me slow down a bit. The titular character refers to Professor Sherman Klump (Eddie Murphy), a morbidly obese chemistry professor at Wellman College. Sherman has worked for years to create a formula that reconstructs a person's DNA in order to make losing weight quickly and without any adverse health effects. Soon after testing his formula on hamsters with success, Sherman musters up the courage to ask Carla Purty (Jada Pinkett), a grad-student at Wellman, out on a date to a comedy club. When the comedian, however, turns out to be an insult comic who publicly shames Sherman for his weight, Sherman becomes depressed to the point where he decides to test the potion he created on himself.
The result is remarkable, as Sherman almost-instantly loses 300 pounds and becomes Buddy Love (also played by Eddie Murphy sans a fat-suit), a suave but manipulative cad, who embraces his thinness in style, buying a new car and new outfits. Things complicate even more when Buddy also begins taking Carla out on a date, making her successfully fall for both men in different ways. When Buddy gradually becomes more manipulative, and eventually can't conceal the fact that Sherman is still inside of him, sometimes rapidly morphing back into his heavier self, Carla becomes more than offput but confused and appalled. That's the calm reaction.
Murphy also takes on the task of playing the extended Klump family, including both of Sherman's parents, Cletus and Anna Klump, his brother, Ernie Klump Sr., and the ill-behaved Granny Klump. There's also Ernie Klump Jr, played by Jamal Mixon, who has desperately few lines of dialog, but just his belly-laughs at his family's antics are enough to make him a great side-character and an uproarious presence. But Murphy is the star here, and proves it time and time again, not in a "look-at-what-I-can-do" sense, but with true comedic timing and character-actor. Murphy is so slick and biting with his comic delivery that he manages to work wonderfully with a script that infuses bathroom humor with some sweet and earnest moments of genuine wit and zest.
Murphy keeps us on our toes here, and I'll be damned if I didn't admit there are some seriously tender moments here about being obese and not always having the self-control to better yourself. Take the sad, tender scene of a frustrated Sherman, sitting on his couch after being scorned for his weight by a comedian, right in front of his date and before a packed club. He sits on the couch in a heavy gray sweatshirt, panting and sweating as he gorges himself on Skittles, ice cream, and other junk-food in a way that's no so much even light-hearted humor as it is a truly sad and telling insight into what may indeed be the reality of millions of people. The difference in the way this scene was handled here versus how it could've been handled in other films is that Murphy isn't afraid to profile the sadness; other comedians, maybe Adam Sandler, would've just pointed and laughed.
The Nutty Professor, aside from arguably being the best showcase for Eddie Murphy as a performer, is a delightful mix of the ribald and the human, as well as being sentimental without being saccharine in its depiction of obesity. The humor is constant, the premise is nicely exercised, and that finale is one for the books in terms of being alive and borderline manic. Plainly stated, it's always a good time.
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Jada Pinkett, James Coburn, Larry Miller, and Jamal Mixon. Directed by: Tom Shadyac.