From Amazon.co.uk
Lucky for Eddie Murphy he got hold of the rights to this 1963 Jerry Lewis classic before Jim Carrey did. Murphy had a comeback of sorts with his Jeckyll-and-Hyde-derived fable of awkward chemistry professor Sherman Klump (Murphy), who discovers a potion that transforms him into the suave, cocky lady-killer Buddy Love (also Murphy). The big difference between the two versions is that Murphy's Sherman is not only a nerdy intellectual but is also grossly obese, which provides the opportunity for some hilarious digital transformation effects, as well as some gentle satire of our culture's attitudes toward fat people. As he did in the hit
Coming to America, Murphy plays multiple roles, and the scenes at the Klump family dinner table, in which he plays everybody, are brilliantly funny. (Murphy won the National Society of Film Critics' award for best actor of 1996 for these performances.) Lewis based his Buddy Love on the 1960s ideal of cool exemplified by Sinatra and the Rat Pack; Murphy stumbles a bit by playing up the oily phoniness of his latter-day Love a little too soon, but for the most part
The Nutty Professor represents a welcome return to form for Eddie Murphy.
--Jim Emerson
Amazon.com Essential Video
Tom Shadyac (
Liar Liar) directed Eddie Murphy in his raucous and inventive "comeback" film, a loose remake of the 1963 Jerry Lewis original. Murphy puts on full-body makeup to play Sherman Klump, a grossly fat college chemistry professor who creates a drug that releases the skinny person within. As in the original (when Lewis morphed into a caricature of former partner Dean Martin) the thin scenes are the most interesting, as the thrill of being handsome turns this sweet schlep into a club-crawling creep named Buddy Love. Jada Pinkett is the dream girl who loves Klump for himself, even after the potion wears off. Apart from some juicy fart jokes, a virtual trumpet concerto that erupts during a virtuoso family dinner scene (in which Murphy plays several roles), the humor is fairly gentle--although young children may find the presto-chango makeup effects alarming. For an effective, flat-out horror treatment of a similar theme, try the Stephen King adaptation
Thinner.
--David Chute
