Column:
Murphy in a fat suit...again
Published Feb. 16, 2007
A riddle: What happens when you cross the vague, racial insensitivity of 19th century vaudeville with the brain-dead, hypersexual physical comedy of the 21st? You get "Norbit," the mind-numbing comedy in which Eddie Murphy has inexplicably decided to spend the critical capital he got from "Dreamgirls." "Norbit," like the two "Nutty Professor" films, is a strange animal. Somewhere, lost in the fat jokes and racial stereotypes, is a movie with some kind of heart, but it's not worth wading through 500 pounds of computer-generated breasts to find it.
In a stunning turn of events, Murphy plays multiple characters, one of whom is morbidly obese. This time around there's Mr. Wong, an r-for-l Chinese pastiche in the oft-scorned tradition of Charlie Chan; Norbit, Murphy's usual stammering everyman; and Rasputia, his massive, controlling wife. Norbit's dominated life is thrown out of balance when his childhood sweetheart, Kate (Thandie Newton), comes back to town.
We're given the history of Norbit and Rasputia's relationship in a history of escalatingly moronic flashbacks. At the wedding reception, someone has eaten some cake, and humorously, it's the fat woman. Then they try to have sex, but she's a fat woman. There are endless twists on this premise, which would be stretched to its breaking point in a music video. Other, more ostensible comic relief comes from Mr. Wong, who sparks an interesting philosophical question: On how many levels is a black man playing a Chinese man who hates black men racially insensitive? Is that meta-insensitivity?
The exasperating thing about this movie is that Murphy (as Norbit) and Newton, who is ridiculously gorgeous in such an unattractively shot film, have real chemistry. Their scenes, in spite of, or perhaps because of, Murphy's hammy lisp and the absurd ways in which they are kept apart, are poignant and funny in the tradition of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn's screwball comedies. Those films' sentimental worldviews tempered by their biting wit were the product of their age. "Norbit" comes to it differently: Because it's so intentionally dumb, it's never worried when it dives all the way into what would be sappy elsewhere. Here it's actually a refreshing change of pace.
Whenever the movie's unabashed sentimentality threatens to make it watchable, though, Murphy comes flouncing into the scene in a fat suit. Forget about the tender moment you just witnessed, he begs, watch Rasputia go down a waterslide. Get it? Because she's fat, and waterslides are skinny.
"Norbit" lucks its way into a marginally effective romance, but it's much more excited by its army of humorless caricatures. Unless you're similarly excited about the prospect of watching Eddie Murphy adopt a Chinese accent and harpoon a fat woman (who is also played by Eddie Murphy), there's not a lot to see.
