I love Eddie Murphy dearly. Seeing his NUTTY PROFESSOR as a kid remains one of my earliest memories of dying of laughter in a movie theater, and I’ve long held the belief that, at his prime, he was easily one of the greatest standups of all time (in terms of broad appeal, not insight or intensity).
Still, I can separate my memory of Eddie at his peak with the reality of current Eddie, who is thoroughly content to sleepwalk through high-concept, low-brow family films like MEET DAVE, IMAGINE THAT, and A THOUSAND WORDS. He’s had a couple of high-profile tributes in his honor (and has another one coming up), and ambled right through those events without even telling a single joke. Even his much-anticipated turn in TOWER HEIST felt mild and slight compared to his heyday, when, through sheer energy, charisma, and comic talent, he became the biggest movie star in the country (world?) before he was 25.
So when I hear that his BOOMERANG/NUTTY PROFESSOR/LIFE/BOWFINGER/TOWER HEIST producer Brian Grazer is developing a vehicle around Eddie for Netflix, it’s hard for me to work up a great deal of excitement. Grazer:
“I’m going to do a movie with Netflix. I’m going to do a tour-de-force movie that’s cinema verite with Eddie Murphy being as raw as he can be.”
Now, his use of the word “raw” is probably radically different from what your associating it with, namely the 1987 standup film where Murphy talks about being on “24-hour homo watch” in San Francisco and why women only want to date him for his money. He’s probably referring more to the dramatic Eddie that was Oscar-nominated for DREAMGIRLS, and who might very well surface in Bruce Beresford’s HENRY JOSEPH CHURCH.
While I don’t think there’s any Eddie fans out there who wouldn’t want to see him get at least as raunchy and over-the-top as he did in the two NUTTY PROFESSORs (let alone stuff like, “Norton my friend, how would you like to fuck me in the ass?”), I don’t think he’s got it in him anymore. He’s been fabulously wealthy (Adam Sandler, of all people, joked, “He has more money than all of us!”) for a long time now, and is still probably making a good chunk of change for the four SHREK movies he voiced, so getting that fiery kid from Brooklyn back, who gleefully rapped about his drunk father and the pleasures of taunting kids who were too broke to buy ice cream, seems pretty much out of the question.
This movie could be anything, but like the set debacle on RIDICULOUS SIX proved, just because it’s Netflix doesn’t mean it’s going to be higher-brow than what the talent’s been putting out recently. Still, Grazer’s collabs with Murphy have been among his stronger projects of the past 25-or-so years, and he was so good in DREAMGIRLS that I would not mind another mostly-dramatic turn from the former “Mr. Fuck-You Man.” But a full-force, comedic Eddie comeback? I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
UPDATED (16:45): Deadline reports that things are premature, and that no deal has been set in place. So this might not even happen. Wonder if folks' response to the idea will help along the negotiationsl...
