Site Presented By
Monday, Nov 23, 2009
One reason that "The Klumps" performs so spectacularly at the box office is that Murphy has figured out how to go PG-13 without losing his R audience. He forges an unholy hybrid of Richard Pryor's profanity and Bill Cosby's coziness. This formula has long had mass appeal. As George Orwell wrote in his famous essay on low-down comic postcards, "the stuck-out behind, dog and lamppost, baby's nappy type of joke" can stand for "the Sancho Panza view of life" -- "the voice of the belly protesting against the soul" -- as well as "the music-hall world where marriage is a dirty joke or a comic disaster." But in "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps," the weight and repetitiveness of the scatological slapstick and putdowns wear you out.
"The Klumps" is like one of Peter Sellers' late Clouseau movies: Although you can't deny the lead performer's brilliance, the movie is just a shaky prop. Early on in his career, Murphy said, "I'd be the first to admit I'm a very funny guy and last to admit I'm a genius." But when Oprah recently declared him a genius on her show, all he could respond with was, "God bless you."
Murphy may be a comic genius, but he's no genius as a filmmaker (cf. "Harlem Nights"). The myth of Murphy as a movie talent unto himself began with the reports circulating around "48 HRS." that he wrote all his lines and comported himself as if movie stardom were his birthright.
The only in-print adult biography of the comedian ("Eddie Murphy: The Life and Times of a Comedian on the Edge") contains numerous references to Murphy's improvisations and a single quote from Murphy thanking the film's director, Walter Hill, for his editorial "blue pencil." Well, I observed that production on and off for a couple of months, and what I saw was simply healthy moviemaking -- a creative filmmaker and his ensemble elaborating on a script.
When I first visited the set of "48 HRS." six months before its sneak, Nolte was alternately fiddling with a still photographer's camera (he would next enact a photojournalist in "Under Fire") and cracking up the crew with his Lee Marvin imitation. Murphy was more distant, listening to a Dazz Band tape on his Walkman while waiting for his shot, then sauntering across the street for one of downtown L.A.'s killer tacos. (Though the action supposedly took place in San Francisco, there were only three weeks of Bay Area location work.) Murphy later admitted that Nolte "big-brothered" him throughout the early days of shooting.
"Eddie has terrific acting ability and tremendous theatrical instincts," director Hill told me at the time, "but Eddie is also a very untrained actor. You don't close the gap between him and someone like Nick in one moment or one day or one night.
"But there's this thing about movies that's proved true for Eddie: You only have to get it right once. You do three takes, and if you get it right once, you're fine. So movies serve Eddie's talent very well, and Eddie's talent serves movies very well. All this may sound like a criticism of Eddie, but it's not meant to be. People have to realize, it's so hard to be good once.
"I mean, movies are such a grab-ass medium: You get 20 minutes to rehearse and then you shoot and what you get you have to live with forever. Eddie had trouble focusing, but he understood that right away. He's carrying a big load -- a lot of people are watching him very carefully to see how he'll do in his first movie. He's taking the chance to demonstrate dramatic abilities that he couldn't have shown walking through some comedy thing. I think Eddie has cracked beyond that right off the bat."
As the filming went on, Murphy's performance began to arouse a certain affectionate awe among his co-workers. On one steaming July day I watched Hill guide Murphy through a complicated nightclub scene. Murphy had to follow catcher-like hand signals to thread his way across the floor in sight of the camera, and when he reached the bar he had to proclaim, "My name is Reggie Hammond," as if that meant something to two women and the bartender. When Hill called for a retake, Murphy pulled himself up to his full height and stared his director down before asking, in a tone of mock-menace: "Are you challenging my comedic timing?" Hill chuckled and gave a palms-out gesture, as it to say, "Hey, I'm only your director." Later, co-writer Larry Gross compared Murphy to (of all people) Frank Sinatra: "They're both entertainers who can be funny and sexy and then surprise people with their strength."
When I met Murphy, I mentioned that we both came from the same hometown -- Roosevelt, N.Y. He looked at my white face in disbelief. I named the address I lived at in the '50s, the parochial school across the street, the elementary school down the block. He didn't want to acknowledge that the journalist in front of him shared his turf. All he would say is, "The neighborhood changed a lot since then."
