Norbit (Widescreen)

 

 

Create your own review

Well admittedly the movie does deliver a few half decent laughs, and if I'm honest at times this is quite an entertaining movie. The scene at the water park with Rasputia along with the bathing suit joke was quite funny. The movie also at times gets a great dark streak at times but it's also quite funny. To say Eddie Murphy is not entertaining at all would be a complete lie. If Murphy does anything good its doing his fast talk in a fat suit. And with Rasputia he manages to pull that off almost perfectly. The character of Rasputia isn't brilliant, but she's bearable and quite amusing at times. Murphy gives his all in that role, and also does quite a good, if slightly racist performance, as Mr. Wong. Unfortunately I was very against the role of Mr Wong due to the racism in his scenes.

So where does Norbit go wrong? Well while the jokes manage to be alright, the main romance and actual storyline is as dull as hell. Whenever Rasputia is off screen you really could not care less about the rest of the movie. Matters are not even remotely helped by the fact that Norbit is an extremely boring and irritating character. His relationship with Thandie Newton's Kate is just boring. It tries to aim at touching but it seems so unrealistic and forced it feels more ludicrous than touching. The movies biggest mistake is when it decides to focus purely on their relationship with Rasputia popping in for brief periods of times. This is the middle section, and the movie is dragged down to almost rock bottom. The middle section is dangerously boring, its in that moment my eyes wandered from the screen on many occasions. Thankfully the story picks up slightly before the end, but the movie had already bored me long before the ending.

The supporting cast of the movie cannot help matters either, Thandie Newton is pretty bland. A shame as she's by no means a bad actress and I think with a better script and perhaps a role that demanded more than existing she might have done well. However she has nothing to work with and seems more bored by the whole thing. Cuba Gooding Jr does what he always does, a bland and attempts to be funny performance that just goes alongside his other hideously bad recent performances. The three brothers of Rasputia are all as bad as each other, they're meant to be the main villains, yet they're just too forgettable. In fact if you take out Eddie Murphy as Rasputia this movie suffers terribly, if Murphy hadn't have played her this movie might have even struggled a bottom rating, with her the movie does sort of redeem itself.

Overall Norbit is an occasionally fun, but all too boring and forgettable experience. Eddie Murphy does a good performance as Rasputia, but the rest of the cast are floundering around him. It could have been a movie to rival The Nutty Professor, but a half hearted script and an extremely dull romance make the movie just another cheap attempt at a comedy.

I have laughed at a movie this hard in a while. Every scene a at least one hilarious moment. Eddie Murphy once again proves that he is terrific a playing multiple characters, and Rasputia is one of the funny movies ever. I wouldn't be surprised if the gets nominated for best makeup at the Oscars. This is a comedy classic, buy it.

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See both customer reviews...

 

Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Search Listmania!