Eddie Murphy is the Klumps in a new and improved sequel. [PG-13]
By: Kam Williams
It’s Eddie Murphy all over again as an assortment of lovable Klumps in Nutty Professor II, pound for pound the biggest gross-out movie of the summer.
Check your IQ at the door, and you’ll find yourself treated to a rapid-fire succession of fat jokes, toilet humor, sexual innuendoes and snappy insults that will make your head spin. Don’t be surprised to find yourself laughing at two jokes at once.
Mr. Murphy is omnipresent as Professor Sherman, Granny, Mama, Papa and Ernie Klump. He also plays Lance Perkins and Sherman’s evil alter-ego, Buddy Love. The multi-talented Murphy infuses each of his characters with a distinctly engaging personality.
This all-Eddie vehicle works because director Peter Segal (Naked Gun 33 1/3), to his credit, assembled a top-flight, behind-the-scenes team headed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Dean Semler (for Dances with Wolves). The laugh-a-minute script reunites Mr. Murphy with Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield, who wrote Eddie’s most memorable Saturday Night Live skits, including Gumby, Buckwheat and Velvet Jones. The flawless make-up artistry of five-time Academy Award winner Rick Baker (for the first Nutty Professor en In Black, Ed Wood, An American Werewolf in London and Harry and the Hendersons) allows Mr. Murphy to disappear so completely into each role that you forget his multiple presence.
And the supporting cast ain’t bad either. Straight man Larry Miller (10 Things I Hate About You) takes one for the school, so to speak, as Dean Richmond in his funniest role since Pretty Woman. Meanwhile, singer/actress Janet Jackson (Poetic Justice) shines above the fray as Professor Denise Gaines, Sherman’s fiancée.
In case you forgot, Nutty Professor was a remake of the 1963 comedy starring Jerry Lewis, which was, in turn, a spoof of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the classic horror story by Robert Louis Stevenson. But by now, although Jerry Lewis still serves as executive producer on this project, Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor has sufficiently eclipsed the original to avoid any further comparison.
In the sequel, painfully-shy Sherman Klump is sweet on his bright, attractive colleague Dr. Gaines, the woman of his fertile dreams. But Sherman is embarrassed by his weight and by his family of dysfunctional overeating fatsos. On top of that, the professor’s body is harboring a secret: Buddy Love, an outrageously offensive alter ego, who could ruin his relationship with Denise.
The plot has the old-fashioned Sherman serenading his love with a mariachi band. (How come, with mariachi bands, the littlest guy always has the biggest guitar?) He pops the question, and when she accepts, Sherman knows he must now get his body under control or risk losing his fiancée. Tinkering in the lab, trying to remove Buddy Love’s DNA from his system, Sherman accidentally discovers a "fountain of youth" serum which restores vitality and removes wrinkles. Sherman hides the youth juice in his basement for safekeeping.
But it finds its way into the hands of Cletus "Papa" Klump, reviving a long-dormant sex drive. And what it does for Granny Klump has to be seen to be believed. All hell breaks loose, as you can imagine, with Sherman desperately trying to get his overeating-turned-oversexed family under control before Denise calls off the wedding.
You’ll laugh even when you don’t want to at the incessantly lowbrow antics.
Rated PG-13 (but deserved an R for graphic toilet humor, crude sexual situations, profanity and offensive insults)
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