Norbit

Last week, Hollywood Elsewhere posted an article concerning a controversial speech given by Eddie Murphy at the 1987 Oscar Ceremony. On hand to present the award for Best Picture, Murphy took the opportunity to express his disgust at the lack of attention Oscar voters devoted to African-American actors and filmmakers. Some construed this article as the inception of a smear campaign directed to veer Murphy away from the Best Supporting Actor statue for Dreamgirls that most are predicting he will walk away with on February 25th. But if Murphy does not in fact win the Oscar this year, it will not be because of drudging up old podium pontifications. Instead, it will be a result of the gigantic smear campaign that Paramount Pictures is releasing in 3000 theaters nation-wide this weekend. A campaign that hinges on one word: Norbit.

Not only is Norbit a vile, unfunny, and all-around-awful movie, it effectively impugns many of Murphy's substantial comedic achievements over the past twenty years. Murphy is an actor I generally adore, and I would love to say that with Norbit he accomplishes a Peter Sellers-like set of multi-character performances, but alas Norbit boils down to a stale game of 'spot the Eddie Murphy,' both in terms of his physical presence and the memories of past performance he's lazily cribbing.

In Norbit, Murphy plays three roles, all of which are stale retreads of successful characters from the past. First up is the titular Norbit, a lame (although admittedly still charming) return of his dorky introvert Jiff from Bowfinger – Steve Martin's hilarious take on Hollywood. Then, there's Norbit's detestable wife Rasputia, the source for the film's obsession with fat jokes. Here, Murphy's acrobatically-fused fat suit hijinks might be funny if he hadn't already performed them with considerably more class in The Nutty Professor and already exhausted them with the crude sequel, The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. His third character is Mr. Wong, an elderly, Asian orphanage manager who doesn't have a trace of the racial commentary Murphy displayed on a Saturday Night Live skit where he adorned similar make-up to go undercover as a white businessman.

And how do these three characters constitute a feature-length film? With great contrivance on the filmmakers' part and much suffering on the audience's part. The loose semblance of a plot begins with baby Norbit being hurled at the doorstep of Mr. Wong's orphanage "” the Golden Won Ton. There, Norbit meets his soul mate, Kate, who is quickly adopted and seemingly moves out of his life forever. A few years later, Norbit meets the beastly Rasputia who decrees that he is now her boyfriend and before he knows it, they've grown up and gotten married. Then one day Kate moves back into town and Norbit realizes he must find a way to writhe free of Rasputia's insatiable grip and return to the woman

he truly loves. Oh, there's also an inane sub-plot about a real estate scam involving the local orphanage, strip clubs and Cuba Gooding Jr., but the less said about that the better.

Norbit himself is a cute enough character and Murphy is too talented a performer not to elicit a tiny smile here and there but the film is overflowing with nasty characters and mean-spirited humor. Director Brian Robbins coats it all in sunlight and bright colors in an attempt to disguise the cruel and malevolent nature of the content but the film's lack of heart is apparent at every turn. Even a scene of Norbit performing a puppet show for orphans quickly devolves into him breaking down into a spew of profanity and tears. With the character of Rasputia, Murphy has created a villain of significant magnitude and I suppose that deserves some credit but the slightest bit of ingenuity presented in the character is undermined by the volatile repulsion induced on the audience member. To be blunt, Norbit is not only one of the worst movies of the year; it's one of the worst of the decade.

Movie Grade: D-

Synopsis:

Norbit (Eddie Murphy) has never had it easy. As a baby, he was abandoned on the steps of a Chinese restaurant/orphanage and raised by Mr. Wong (Eddie Murphy). Things get worse when he’s forced into marriage by the mean, junk food-chugging queen, Rasputia (Eddie Murphy). Just when Norbit’s hanging by his last thread, his childhood sweetheart, Kate (Thandie Newton), moves back to town. In the comedy Norbit, he’ll find that nice guys sometimes finish first.