Eddie Murphy – Yesterday's Movies

The Adventures of Pluto Nash

May 20, 2023temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I was vaguely aware of this movie coming out, and it looked vaguely interesting, but I couldn’t really tell much about it from what I saw. This poster, which is just about all the promotional material I saw at the time, tells you that it stars Eddie Murphy, that he’s having adventures on the moon, and it looks vaguely like throwback to the Flash Gordon serials.

This has since become known as one of Eddie Murphy’s biggest flops, which is a distinction with a lot of competition from the 90s through the 00s. I always got the idea it was either not the movie audiences wanted it to be or didn’t hit the tone it was trying for, or both. I can certainly see Summer 2002 being a very bad time for an homage/parody of 30s pulp sci-fi.

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Tower Heist

August 26, 2022August 27, 2022temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I passed by this a few times because I generally don’t consider crime movies to be my kind of thing. But then I noticed that it has comedy actors leading it, so I looked closer, and saw that it’s not just about stealing money, it’s about folks who lost their retirement funds to a scummy hedge fund manager stealing it back, and that interests me a lot.

I get the sense that a lot of “revenge on the Wall Street crooks” movies came out in the years after the 2009 collapse, but I mainly get that from having seen Fun with Dick and Jane in the last year, which was very very loudly about surviving a Wall Street implosion (looking it up, I realize that movie in particular wasn’t about the 2009 collapse, but the timing seems more like it was about Enron).

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Meet Dave

May 4, 2022May 6, 2022temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I clearly remember the promotion for this movie (it’s still a little strange to have films from about the time I started this blog that are old enough to show up here), but everything I saw indicated that Dave wasn’t a real person but a ship piloted by tiny people for some reason. One of the more intriguing Eddie Murphy vehicle concepts since the late 90s, but since so few of his projects have been well received since he got enough fame to make any movie he wanted, not that compelling. Also I seem to recall the little people were all played by Murphy, which seems to further underscore the artificiality while also playing into his enthusiasm for multiple roles (something I can’t begrudge him for, as when I was regularly making videos I kept writing stuff that let me act against myself too).

However, when I came across this opportunity now, the summary I saw described Dave like he’s a man hijacked in his own body by tiny aliens sabotaging his love life. Everything I assumed may be wrong and I’m now more interested in the story instead of just the concept.

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The Nutty Professor (1996)

September 10, 2021temporalparadoxLeave a comment

*The Nutty Professor. Imagine Entertainment 1996.*

Before watching the movie:

There are two reasons I avoided this movie. First, the original probably didn’t need a remake (I thought I reviewed that but I guess it was before I started this blog), and second, I’m concerned by how the Eddie Murphy version of the character is ostracized for being obese, not for being a nerd, which almost certainly means that fat jokes will fuel a lot of the movie. Why wasn’t it enough for the Dr. Jekyll side to be nerdy? 1996 was still a little before geek culture took over the zeitgeist. Was a black nerd drinking a potion to turn suave too close to Steve Urkel/Stefan Urquel, debuting three years earlier on television? Judging from Eddie Murphy’s live action movies since this one, I suspect he just thinks wearing fat suits is funny, and he’s Eddie Murphy so he can make whatever movies he wants.

I am kind of excited to learn that James Coburn is in this somewhere.

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The Haunted Mansion

October 9, 2020temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

I’m pretty sure this was greenlit on the success of the first Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. That there were no sequels or further “movies based on Disneyland attractions” projects (until Tomorrowland much much later) to my knowledge suggests it did not do as well as they hoped.

I didn’t even realize that Wallace Shawn is in this. I just knew there’s Eddie Murphy, and a house full of ghosts. Presumably there are some important ghosts.

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Imagine That

February 14, 2020temporalparadoxLeave a comment

Before watching the movie:

Eddie Murphy’s work since the late 90s has a reputation for not being good, at least when it comes to his live-action vehicles or possibly anything other than the Shrek franchise. If anyone liked The Nutty Professor, nobody really cared for what came after, including the two sequels. Eddie Murphy stopped being funny on screen around the time Will Smith became a movie star somehow.

This movie is a Nickelodeon production, so it’s clearly aimed directly at children and families, but other than children-oriented movies getting ignored, I don’t see anything that would indicate why it’s not considered a Good Eddie Murphy Movie. I don’t see any warning signs yet.

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Daddy Day Care

December 13, 2019temporalparadox1 Comment

Before watching the movie:

Men caring for children and being overwhelmed! That’s funny, right? Because men can’t handle kids? Or because men aren’t prepared for childcare and face a steeper learning curve? Eddie Murphy and his friend who’s not a big enough name to be billed above the title or featured on the poster at all will find out, I guess.

I thought this movie had both Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin, but I’m pretty sure I’m just confused because Steve Martin appeared in Cheaper By The Dozen the same year, and they are both movies about Too Many Kids.

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Bowfinger

April 29, 2016temporalparadox1 Comment

Before watching the movie:

Why haven’t I seen this movie? Well, it’s PG-13, and I was ten or eleven when it came out. But why haven’t I seen it since? I’m not sure why I never circled around to it. Eventually I started doing this blog and I knew when I saw it, I’d have to review it here, which has a tendency to slow things down. But Steve Martin and 80s-90s Eddie Murphy together make for a film I’d have to experience eventually.

I always had some concept of the plot as being about a scam going down, so I was picturing something like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. But then a movie is involved, so maybe it was more like After the Fox. It turns out, the scam is that a box office superstar is getting tricked into acting in a no-budget film for free, I guess via hidden cameras. This is going to be fun.

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48 Hours

March 27, 2015March 27, 2015temporalparadox1 Comment

Before watching the movie:

I think I first heard this existed in some kind of Eddie Murphy retrospective. I just remember an interview clip of Murphy talking about being awed at getting the chance to work with Nick Nolte. This looks like a slight revision of the “buddy cop” formula, where in this case, one of the chalk and cheese pairing isn’t a cop but a convict, presumably with the connections the one who is a cop needs.

Buddy cop wasn’t played out in the early 80s, but I think it was still well established at the time. What comes to mind right now is that the two-year later Beverly Hills Cop seems like a streamlined version of this premise without the buddy cop dynamic, merging the streetwise fast-talker character with the unshakeable detective character. It’s highly likely from the similarity and proximity that Murphy got Beverly Hills because of this movie.

I’m not sure I’ve seen Nolte in anything other than Lorenzo’s Oil, which I saw in a science class in high school. I don’t remember much of it, but I do know it’s clearly a very different film from this. Continue reading →

The Golden Child

October 17, 2013October 18, 2013temporalparadox1 Comment

Before watching the movie:

I first heard of this movie as the project that made Eddie Murphy back out of Star Trek IV. It was probably for the better, since the comedy of that movie comes from the serious characters being dumbfounded by the 20th century, and a wisecracking, street smart native would have made it more farcical.

Besides that, I know what the blurb says, about a social worker searching for a Tibetan boy destined to save the world, and I recall there being some kind of prop/replica in the quiet footpath with movie memorabilia at King’s Island before they replaced that area with something more interesting for their target clientele. Probably a gift shop, I don’t remember.

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