2008 Woodie Awards
45-year-old Murphy is back enjoying comedy after drama
Chris Vognar / The Dallas Morning News (MCT)
Issue date: 2/26/07 Section: Entertainment
He prowled the stage in skintight red pants, making gay jokes and dropping a reported 230 F-bombs in a single standup routine. But that was the old Eddie Murphy, or, rather, the brash, young Eddie Murphy. No Oscar nomination, no career collapse and rebirth, no talking donkey. He was just a hungry, profane comedian on fire, full of boundless ability to make you drop a jaw and bust a gut.
Yes, we're talking about Delirious, the ever-quotable, shamelessly offensive 1983 concert that came to DVD last week, just in time for you to try a little movie-star experiment. First, watch Delirious. Then check out Dreamgirls and watch Murphy earn his first Oscar nomination in a rare serious role. Finally, join the cavalcade to Norbit, in which the 45-year-old star plays three characters and indulges his taste for the vulgar in a more lucrative and now familiar PG-13 format.
Is it all the same guy? Sure. He got older, took some lumps, learned to play the game. But just because the guy's about to win an Oscar does not mean he's gone highbrow.
One lesson he's learned: A middle-age star does not gain further riches or honors by working blue, especially when he's already mastered the art of being crude without the box-office limitations of an R rating. Just dress in a fat suit, go heavy on bodily humor and watch your language just enough. You do not need to use the F word to appeal to everyone's inner fourteen-year-old boy.
Delirious fans; and if you were a teenager in 1983, you are probably a Delirious fan; will remember the film's seamless mix of the tasteless and the sweet. One minute, the star imagines the likes of Mr. T and Jackie Gleason grunting through sodomy (and spreads the dangerous, albeit common, misperception that only gay men get AIDS). The next minute, he's spinning yarns about his pyromaniac Uncle Gus ("That's a fire!") and the icecream man.
The same split instinct is at work in Norbit, in which Murphy borrows a page from his own Nutty Professor playbook by playing three characters: Norbit, a sweet-natured nerd who can not stand up for himself; Rasputia, Norbit's grotesque and overbearing wife who makes Martin Lawrence's Big Momma look like a model of fragile femininity; and Wong, a caricature of a Chinese restaurant owner who, it might be said, gets some pretty funny lines: "I don't like black. I don't like Jew either. But black and Jew love Chinese food."
Yes, we're talking about Delirious, the ever-quotable, shamelessly offensive 1983 concert that came to DVD last week, just in time for you to try a little movie-star experiment. First, watch Delirious. Then check out Dreamgirls and watch Murphy earn his first Oscar nomination in a rare serious role. Finally, join the cavalcade to Norbit, in which the 45-year-old star plays three characters and indulges his taste for the vulgar in a more lucrative and now familiar PG-13 format.
Is it all the same guy? Sure. He got older, took some lumps, learned to play the game. But just because the guy's about to win an Oscar does not mean he's gone highbrow.
One lesson he's learned: A middle-age star does not gain further riches or honors by working blue, especially when he's already mastered the art of being crude without the box-office limitations of an R rating. Just dress in a fat suit, go heavy on bodily humor and watch your language just enough. You do not need to use the F word to appeal to everyone's inner fourteen-year-old boy.
Delirious fans; and if you were a teenager in 1983, you are probably a Delirious fan; will remember the film's seamless mix of the tasteless and the sweet. One minute, the star imagines the likes of Mr. T and Jackie Gleason grunting through sodomy (and spreads the dangerous, albeit common, misperception that only gay men get AIDS). The next minute, he's spinning yarns about his pyromaniac Uncle Gus ("That's a fire!") and the icecream man.
The same split instinct is at work in Norbit, in which Murphy borrows a page from his own Nutty Professor playbook by playing three characters: Norbit, a sweet-natured nerd who can not stand up for himself; Rasputia, Norbit's grotesque and overbearing wife who makes Martin Lawrence's Big Momma look like a model of fragile femininity; and Wong, a caricature of a Chinese restaurant owner who, it might be said, gets some pretty funny lines: "I don't like black. I don't like Jew either. But black and Jew love Chinese food."
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