#94 Norbit (Wes)

 

#94 Norbit

Give me an 80s Eddie Murphy film and a few beers and I’m happy. Beverly Hills Cop and Trading Places are just brilliant movies and I could happily watch them at any time. Give me a post 80s Eddie Murphy film (with the exception of Bowfinger, Shrek and Shrek 2) and I’ll sit in the corner and cry until you take it away. So you can imagine my displeasure at finding out I had to watch Norbit for this list.

The story of Norbit (Eddie Murphy) starts with a baby being abandoned at a orphanage/ restaurant where he is raised by Mr Wong (Eddie Murphy). At the orphanage he has a childhood love Kate (Thandie Newton) who gets adopted leaving Norbit all alone. When he gets a little older he meets Rasputia (I bet you can’t guess….), who saves him from some bullies and takes him as her boyfriend. They eventually marry and Rasputia gets fatter, meaner, more obnoxious and is generally an unpleasant bully. Kate moves back to town to buy the orphanage, but is engaged to Deion Hughes (Cuba Gooding Jr), which upsets Norbit’s plans to get back with his true love. However Hughes is a conman and the rest of the film plays in a standard will true love win whilst the bad guys get their comeuppance scenario?

 

So has Eddie Murphy made one of those rare films that will make me change my mind about his downward spiral into the depths of the terminally unfunny? Unfortunately not, this movie simply failed to tickle me at all. The only time I laughed in the entire movie was when a duck that Norbit was playing with in the restaurant gets slaughtered and Norbit is given the head to play with. Any film where duck mutilation is the funniest moment is not something that I could recommend to anybody.

The problem with the humour is that it all relies heavily on tired stereotypes. Rastputia’s obesity of course is a major point of humour for her character. As she breaks beds when getting a little over-enthusiastic, Cannonballs down a waterslide, or breaks a seat to fit in a car you just can’t help but start to inspect the fluff from your belly button in an attempt to occupy your brain in a more meaningful manner. The movie makers do their best to demonise her at every moment and you can’t help but compare that to other movies with similar fat jokes that went the other way and showed that just because someone’s not the Hollywood idea of perfection, then it doesn’t mean they’re ugly (eg Shallow Hal). Perhaps if they didn’t have Thandie Newton as his true love then this wouldn’t have seemed so bad, but really they just seem to be sending the message out as fat equals bad, skinny equals good.

Norbit is a sweet character, but really it’s just been done before. Murphy plays him in very much the same way that Adam Sandler played Robert Boucher in The Waterboy. Softly spoken and sticking out his chin slightly (every lazy actors portrayal of somebody who is a little slow). Actually the latter half of the story is slightly similar to Sandler’s The Wedding Singer, but where that film had some moments of pure genius (BILLY IDOL!), this doesn’t.

Murphy’s other role being the racist Mr Wong in this movie is just as deplorable as the fat jokes used for Rasputia. His humour being based around being generally offensive and speaking in pidgin English. He reminded me slightly of Bernard Bresslaw as Fan Choy in One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing. That movie was however made thirty two years before Norbit, at a time when this sort of humour was more accepted, so at least that has an excuse.

Outside of the humour of these characters, pretty much every other joke is toilet based. I’m sure I’ve made this clear before, but I love a good fart gag. Unfortunately all of these have come straight from the recycling plant too. I’m just thankful they persuaded Thandie Newton to be in this movie. At least there was something pretty to watch whilst I slowly died inside.

I’m not sure what shocked me more about this movie when I was doing a little research on it. The fact that it made so much money at the box office, or that it was nominated for an Oscar (best make-up). To be fair, the make up was very good, but being done by legend that is Rick Baker, then that’s not much of a surprise. The box office success though? Are there really that many people out there who are still hoping that one day Eddie Murphy will be funny again and go to each of his movies in the vain hope that this will be the film that he makes a spectacular comeback? If anyone remembers Quantum Leap then you may remember that there was an evil leaper who went around trashing peoples lives as Sam Beckett tried to save others. I’m starting to suspect that they may be responsible for Eddie Murphy still finding an audience.

So now for the big question: At what point in time did Eddie Murphy decide that playing multiple roles in a movie was a good idea? This is something he’s done several times now and I really can’t work out why (OK, so it worked in Bowfinger, but that doesn’t excuse it). Do the studios save money by only hiring one actor? Does he get paid three times? Really, what is the point? I think this is one of the major problems in this movie. Murphy used to be cool, charming and funny, which may have hidden any flaws in his acting, now he seems to have lost these assets you just can’t escape him.

The tagline for this movie was “Have you ever made a big mistake?”, I just can’t help but think that Murphy’s was not to retire from filmmaking in 1990.