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'Nutty Professor II: The Klumps' unworthy of Eddie MurphyBrilliance wasted
(CNN) -- Eddie Murphy may well be the most proficient comic actor to grace our screens since the untimely death of Peter Sellers nearly 20 years ago. Unfortunately, Murphy is in danger of getting permanently tangled in the same traps that so often restricted Sellers' immense gifts. In "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps," Murphy plays five different members of the Klump family, a clan he introduced in 1996's "The Nutty Professor." Each Klump - Sherman, Mama, Papa, Granny, and Ernie -- is invested with a unique set of physical, rhythmic, and vocal characteristics. You quickly lose sight of the fact that they're all played by one man. But Murphy's biggest accomplishment is that he endows his creations with unanticipated bursts of tenderness, and he continually pulls off intricate comic moments while playing scenes with people who aren't really there. Comedies, and the performances that drive them, are ritually snubbed by the Oscars. Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could set themselves on the road to righteousness by nominating Murphy for his work in "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps." They probably won't, though, because of a genuinely infantile screenplay that leaves no bodily function unchecked. Get a 14 year-old to name it, and you'll find it here -- erection jokes, impotence jokes, big-breast jokes, farts, vomiting, senior-citizen sex gags, middle-aged sex gags, big-penis jokes, little-penis jokes, etc. The monotony is broken late in the film when a man is sexually assaulted by a 10-foot-tall mutant hamster, an interlude that comes moments after the hamster is shown knocking people over with enormous turds shooting from its butt. Love in the labSherman, the sensitive, overweight college professor of the title, is in love with a colleague this time around, a beautiful geneticist named Denise Gaines (Janet Jackson).
Jackson and Murphy have real rapport with each other, even when Eddie is suffocating under pounds of carefully applied latex. There's a forgiving warmth about the two. You can tell they like each other, and Jackson is an engaging big-screen performer. Many critics will focus on these sweet scenes in an attempt to cut the movie some slack; Murphy's work is that inspired. But it's tremendously depressing to see this reflective, sincere romance fight for life within a scatological free-for-all. The plot, as you might expect, is of negligible concern so long as Murphy gets to strut his stuff and the movie makes $100 million. Sherman, who's recently been hearing the voice of his alter ego, Buddy Love (also Murphy), is about to sell his fountain-of-youth formula to a pharmaceuticals company. He wants to marry Denise, but the profane "Buddy" side of his personality is ruining their romance. Eventually, Sherman uses newly devised technology to remove Buddy from his system. Gross jokes aboundEverything's fine after that, until Buddy is accidentally brought to life for a libidinous joy ride that's barely integrated into the rest of the movie. For reasons that are too silly to get into, Buddy's genetic code is now partially comprised of dog DNA. That means he gets to relieve himself on newspapers in a public restroom when there hasn't been a tacky joke for a few minutes. Murphy's most raucous scene comes early on, when the obese Klumps descend on an all-you-can-eat family restaurant like a team of gunslingers stepping out of the mist. The physical interplay between the Klumps is astonishing, and Murphy effortlessly establishes the characters' attitudes toward one another with tilted heads and strained vocal inflections. It's difficult to say which Klump is his most enjoyable creation. Self-centered brother Ernie is good for several thick-headed laughs, and kind-hearted Mama is often downright touching. But horny old Granny will probably generate the biggest following. 
As Granny, Murphy rolls his words around on his tongue as if he's sucking the flavor out of them before he speaks, and he mutters in a way that suggests barely contained old-lady violence. Again, though, virtually every joke in this scene is abusive, and it ends with Papa farting so hard that the gas is ignited by a nearby open flame. You get the distinct feeling that screenwriters Barry W. Blaustein, David Sheffield, Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz (that's right, it took four people) didn't lose much sleep thinking this stuff up. Their computer keyboards should be dusted for fingerprints to see if a team of schoolchildren actually wrote the script. Low standards, big bucksThough the opening sequences suggest that there might be some thrust to the story, things get pretty episodic by the half-way point. Once director Peter Segal starts randomly dropping dream sequences into the mix, the main story line becomes more of a nuisance than a road map. As embarrassing as much of it is, "Klumps" is bound to rake in money, thus locking Murphy in a commercial cul de sac that led Sellers to appear in scores of pictures that were far beneath his talents. Murphy only recently revived his foundering commercial instincts, but his skills cry out for social and political satires at a time when you could argue that only Joel and Ethan Coen are capable of properly writing them for the big screen. Or, more to the point, they're the only ones who can get away with filming them at a time when Hollywood is lowering its comic sights as a matter of course. "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" is a waste of a brilliant actor, and yet another step in the desecration of what used to be a popular art form. Comedies don't have to be totally idiotic, regardless of ever-mounting evidence to the contrary. "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" isn't offensive for being rude. It's offensive because it's so vigorously stupid. There's some profanity, and tons of sexual situations to go with the bodily functions. Its effects team may well win a Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking work in digital flatulence. Rated PG-13. 105 minutes. RELATED STORIES: Chris and Paul Weitz RELATED SITES: Nutty Professor II: The Klumps |
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