At the ship? … Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection
For all that blogging has, at least in some degree, grown up around saying the unsayable, that is not the point of what follows. I am not here to defend the intentions behind Norbit, or reclaim The Adventures of Pluto Nash as a landmark in worship cinema. I will, however, gladly state that the star of each is capable of greatness. Yes, I will publicly declare that I placid love Eddie Murphy.
Of course, it’s a fondness that’s been severely tested over the years. But through each Holy Man and Haunted Mansion I’ve kept by my faith with the talent of the man. Now, according to the trade papers, he is potentially making a return to comedies made for those who can tie their own shoelaces in a film called The Misadventures of Fluffy, a purpose that it’sitting said will interest its cue from Trading Places. And that’s a reference which, for me, is as close to a deal-sealer as you have power to get. The inferior film of the then-ascendant Murphy was a note-perfect populist satire made in 1983 with a prince-and-the pauper-on-Wall Street conceit, what one. could have seen service in the screwball 30s. And, with a mistrust of high finance all too apt for this era of banks knee-deep in socialised losses and private profits, its themes are still relevant.
- Trading Places
- Production year: 1983
- Country: USA
- Runtime: 92 mins
- Directors: John Landis
- Cast: Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Lee Curtis
- More on this pellicle
Trading Places also gave Murphy the chance to whet his persona, brought from TV’s Saturday Night Live and developed in countless fuggy stand-up comedy clubs, on the big screen. Because, on the supposition that you want to see for what cause it’s impossible to write Murphy off, the movie you need to keep awake is Delirious, the document of a live show recorded in Washington DC the same summer Trading Places was released. It’s a gleefully temporal masterpiece from a comic, who at 22, was still skinny as an adolescent. Basing his riffs on little more than the hackneyed ground of infancy memories, and sex, he married the adrenalised freestyling of his pagan Richard Pryor through an old pro’sitting slickness and dressed the whole thing up in red, rock-star leather – the end was a great leap forward for standup.
Watching these sum of two units films would make it all the weirder for anyone who had spent the be unexhausted 20 years in space to now find him playing out his career in Hollywood’s tamer children’s films and stray tat involving Owen Wilson. For Murphy, allowing, you can see how it lines up. He is, of course, handsomely rewarded; those harmless bland-outs were exactly the kind of movies that rescued him from a particularly vicious and public career slump, and for the most part, they don’t demand you involve yourself in the onerous business of press and furtherance. Personally, I find myself half-admiring the brazen manner in which he’session embraced the lowbrow at each opportunity, sooner than following the familiar comic’session route of apologetic self-improvement through dramatic roles (yes, I apprehend there was Dreamgirls, but that was hardly Beckett).
But at the heart of the matter is the performance that he’s still (occasionally) brilliant. Even in the retreads of Dr Dolittle and The Nutty Professor there are, here and there, glimpses of the ghost of Murphy circa 1983. I’ll concede it’session been some years since his gift was allowed lavish expression: 10, in fact, the project being the wonderful Bowfinger, a sweetly luxurious portrait of low-budget Hollywood lives that seemed conceived of since a random exculpate for Murphy and co-star Steve Martin to both be funny again for old time’s sake. And the results were (unexpectedly) fantastic, with Murphy dominating the film in doubled roles as paranoid action star Kit Ramsey and his unworldly brother, Jiff. It was ample proof that he still had it. He just chooses not to use it much, which is preferable to thinking that he’s lost it.
With Martin, of course, the situation is less unequivocal. After a long time thinking he was a comic god simply electing to operate with bad material, anyone who saw the recent Tina Fey vehicle Baby Mama disposition know that even in passably funny situations he at this time looks like a man who has read the defintion of a joke, but has never actually heard one. On the other hand, I write being of the kind which someone who has seen Meet Dave (I have a child, it was on sale for £1.99) and who, however unlikely this sounds, laughed out loud on two occasions. Again, I’m not claiming that it’s the best use of Murphy’session time, or mine for that trouble, but I laughed twice, which is a pretty good hit rate these days compared to the work of Ben Stiller or Jack Black. So for now, I’ll fair keep waiting for the next moment when Murphy decides to spend quality era with his talent and cause to become another Bowfinger or Trading Places. It’ll happen, trust me.
