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Hey everyone, Eddie Murphy has a new film coming out! Can you feel the excitement? Do you sense the frisson of anticipation as America girds itself for another laff-heavy, hardy-har-har extravaganza from the reigning prince of comedy?
No, you can't, because Eddie Murphy movies suck.
Come to think of it, has Eddie Murphy ever made a really funny movie?
Okay, Trading Places was funny, but that was in 1983. Almost twenty years ago! Reagan was in the White House! There was no internet! Rap had barely been invented! Children who were born in the year that movie came out who are now going to college!
And, yes, we know everyone has affection in their hearts for 48 Hours and Beverly Hills Cop, but were those movies really comedies? Sure, Eddie Murphy was cute as the jazzy black man screwing with his uptight white superiors, but he wasn't really being funny. He was being sassy. Those weren't comedies; they were sassydies. Or maybe sassomedies.
And, sure, when the young Eddie Murphy blazed into Hollywood at the ripe old age of nineteen, he was something else. The young Eddie Murphy -- the one who did Gumby and Mr. Robinson and James Brown-in-the-hot-tub on SNL -- was a prodigy. Of that SNL cast, Billy Crystal was talented, and Christopher Guest was outrageously talented, but Murphy -- he just shone. His stand-up was never particularly smart -- he'd never be confused for George Carlin, let alone Richard Pryor -- but it crackled. And Murphy was sexy, and in-America's-face about his sexiness, which at the time felt not just funny, but dangerous and exciting.
Then he turned twenty.
Then he made a bunch of huge hit movies, such as 48 Hours, Trading Places, and Beverly Hills Cop. And then, for an encore, he made a bunch of stinky, non-hit movies, such as Best Defense, The Golden Child, and Harlem Nights. Then he made a whole bunch more of those stinky non-hits, such as Boomerang, The Distinguished Gentleman, and Vampire in Brooklyn.
Have you forgotten Trading Places yet? Has your good will over Gumby been all but drained away?
Then he fell into a prolonged career slump. Then, to pull himself out of the slump, he made a bunch of films that represented uncharted territory for him: stinky movies that turned out to be hits. Movies like The Nutty Professor and Dr. Doolittle. Sensing he was on to something, he made Dr. Doolittle 2 and The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps. Farting abounded. Fat people farting. Skinny people farting. Animals farting. But most of all, Eddie Murphy farting, often under pounds of make-up and playing entire farting families. He farted and farted and farted. Now, in Pluto Nash, he'll fart in space.
Okay, have you forgotten about 48 Hours now? How about now?
You know, Bowfinger was a muddled mess of a film, but to watch it -- you could just weep. Because Steve Martin is a funny guy, but seeing him onscreen next to Eddie Murphy simply illuminates the fact that Murphy has more natural talent than Martin and Billy Crystal and Adam Sandler and Robin Williams combined. Murphy is fantastic in that movie. He plays a cocky movie star (no stretch there) and the cocky movie star's nerdling doppelganger brother, and the performance is a thing of beauty. But the movie flopped, and so Murphy rushed back to his regularly scheduled farting.
Hey, fart away, we say. People seem to dig it. The kids -- the same ones, apparently, who were sucklings when Murphy made that one funny movie he made -- seem to love it. But we've had enough. We're not even talking about that "Party All The Time" song you did back in the '80s, or the weird thing with the transsexual prostitute. We're just talking about the movies. And the farting. And the farting movies, which are the only kind of movies you make anymore.
You were so funny on SNL. You were so funny and you frittered it all away. We're not saying that you should be busted down to Joe Piscopo fame levels for your crimes of excess and sad career wrong-headedness. Okay, actually, that is what we're saying. Yes, we know, Piscopo kind of sucks. But so, Eddie Murphy, do you.
Wait, one more thing, just for you, Eddie:
Poot!
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