June 28, 1996

While the recently-minted superstar Jim Carrey was challenging himself (and getting paid well) with THE CABLE GUY, his ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE director was remaking Jerry Lewis’s 1963 movie THE NUTTY PROFESSOR. A challenge of a different sort, I guess, because it’s a big special effects movie. It was a huge hit (biggest comedy of 1996, and #5 movie overall), a comeback for Eddie Murphy, and even won an Oscar (best makeup for the legendary Rick Baker). Murphy is quite good in it. I always hated it though.

Sherman Klump (Murphy between VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN and MULAN) is a professor at Wellman College who is also heading the lab’s groundbreaking DNA experiments on hamsters. He happens to be quite obese, but he gets by, and he’s very good natured. I think people like him, with the exception of his less-than-one-dimensionally uptight boss, Dean Richmond (Larry Miller, RADIOLAND MURDERS), who hates his fucking guts and always stands around and/or hides in his classroom, making various outraged expressions at his activities.

The first joke in the movie (if you’re charitable enough to count it as a joke) is about Richard Simmons. In 1996 you couldn’t really address the topic of weight loss without the observation “Can you believe that Richard Simmons!?” So Murphy plays “Lance Perkins,” not so much a parody as an imitation of Simmons. That makeup is a disturbing image to open on.

I think a joke in the next scene will give you a better idea of the strength and quality of wackiness in this picture. A couple are sitting on the grass at the college when a hamster somehow crawls up the leg of the man’s pants. The woman sees the bulge it creates, apparently believes he has a large boner wagging back and forth, and is very pleased by this. This is only the first of many hijinks involving the unlikely number of hamsters roaming free on campus due to Sherman not noticing that his ass bumped the “for some reason this lever opens all of the cages at the same time” lever on the way out of the lab. Whoops. When he goes into the dean’s office to be dressed down for it he notices, but is stopped from pointing out, that a hamster dangling from the light fixture takes a shit right into the dean’s coffee.

Friends, welcome to COMEDY! Comedy is illegal today, but in 1996 it was a way of life!

I believe there is a most famous scene in this movie, and it’s when Sherman has dinner with his extended family. Murphy also plays Sherman’s mother, father, brother and grandmother, all large people with different elaborate Rick Baker makeup, different voices, bickering with each other. So he’s everybody in the scene except his nephew Ernie Jr. (Jamal Mixon, later in HOUSE PARTY 4: DOWN TO THE LAST MINUTE). I have a vivid memory of Oprah interviewing Murphy to promote the movie and acting like he’d invented time travel or something, showing the clips saying “That’s Eddie! That’s Eddie! That’s also Eddie!” like it had never been done before. (Maybe she mentioned he did it in COMING TO AMERICA. I can’t remember.)

The thing is, though, these are good performances, good comedy sketch type characters, and there are many parts that make me laugh, especially from the horny grandma. The ol’ inappropriate grandma gag can work on me, I admit it. But eventually it gets to the part of the scene where his dad starts intentionally farting repeatedly until he accidentally shits himself. So, you know. But at least it gave us THE FATTIES: FART 2.

There’s a love interest in this movie, and it’s Carla Purty (Jada Pinkett in her followup to TALES FROM THE CRYPT PRESENTS DEMON KNIGHT), who introduces herself to Sherman as a fan of his work and a grad student who’s teaching her first Intro to Chemistry class across the hall. I thought it sounded unethical for him to date her, but I guess in the original she’s a student in his class, so hooray for progress.

They go on a date to a popular club for the young people, where Montell Jordan (as himself) performs “This Is How We Do It” as the opening act for a Def Comedy Jam comedian called Reggie Warrington (Dave Chappelle in his fourth movie). It’s a very Chappelle’s Show type of character, doing a voice, dancing around, jumping up and doing the splits and things to punctuate every joke, a good parody of a hyperactive comedy style.

There’s this specific transition I forgot about, but at the time I thought of it as the key to why I hated this movie, and it still stands. Reggie jokes about the appearance of somebody near the stage, then another person. Sherman realizes that the jokes are moving across the crowd in his direction, and foresees the potential for humiliation. He tries to get up, which only calls Reggie’s attention to his giant ass.

When Reggie starts making fat jokes at his expense, Sherman chuckles, says “That’s a good one” and “you got me,” etc., but Reggie keeps going. The camera slowly moves closer as Sherman can no longer fake a smile, can only sit grimly and listen to one cruelty after another. And Murphy is so good! Carla looks just as upset as him, and angrier, but knows it will be better to just let it go than to make a scene about it. (Watching this now is very weird if you think about her being married to Will Smith and what happened when they were sitting in the front a the Oscars and Chris Rock made a joke about her.)

Anyway, the music is gentle, the jokes fade out, and the next scene is very quiet and somber. It’s pouring down rain when Sherman drops Carla off at her house. She tries to comfort him with something about “that comic” and “you’re a brilliant man,” but it’s awkward to talk about, and then instead of a kiss or a hug they shake hands. As he turns to leave he holds a newspaper over his head, but he thinks about it for a second and just puts the paper away as he walks into the downpour and takes it. Punishing himself. The music is very serious, very sad.

Then it cuts to him sitting on his couch, watching Lance Perkins and stuffing a comical amount of cake and ice cream and things into his face, dumping an entire jar of M&Ms into his mouth while cartoonishly sobbing.

Like so many parts of this movie – when he can’t fit into a chair, when his belly erases the chalkboard and the class laughs at him, when he knocks people over trying to squeeze through the crowded night club – these are details that might have been written as sad truths about how hard his life is. But they are filmed, acted and scored like gags. They were just telling us how mean it is to make fun of him for being fat, and 30 second later they’re doing it themselves. Motherfucker, you can’t have your cake and make fun of someone for eating the cake too.

I mean, think about the scene in HEAVY where Victor has a secret stash of junk food for compulsive eating. Compare it to Sherman’s fully stocked secret candy drawer in his classroom. There’s a tonal difference between them, let’s say. And then Murphy takes off the fat suit and does scenes as other characters with real fat people as his props. I couldn’t help but worry about how they felt doing that, or later watching the whole movie. It’s not nice.

A major culprit is composer David Newman, who had just done a good job on THE PHANTOM. I mean I’m sure he just did what they asked him, but… you know. “Just following orders” doesn’t cut it. They have him telling the audience how to feel about each scene, and that’s rough. There’s gonna be a little “Holy shit you guys is this WHIMSICAL! Let me give you my Danny Elfman shit!” and a whole lot of “Can you believe how funny this is? I’m cracking up just scoring it,” and of course the aforementioned “Ah, so sad. Poor guy. Why are they so mean to him?,” followed by the “Can you believe it, his titties are bouncing around, look at the fatty go it’s so funny!”

So the professor calls upon his nuttiness to change his situation. He messes with the formula he was using on hamsters and tests it on himself, which not only transforms him into regular, thin Eddie Murphy, but changes his voice and personality. At first maybe he could just be acting different out of excitement that he’s living a life he never did before, but his assistant Jason (John Ales, also in SPY HARD) later determines that the formula is raising his testosterone levels, making him a vain jerk. When Carla sees him in his lab, rather than explaining what happened he pretends to be a friend of Sherman’s named Buddy Love and gets her to go on a date to the same place. Reggie Warrington is performing again, and Buddy turns the tables on him in a pretty satisfying scene.

But this reveals a problem I often have with this type of movie: Carla is played as a real character and totally reasonable person we’re supposed to have respect for, and Pinkett gives a real performance. So it makes her seem like such a god damn idiot when she has to do things for the plot like be attracted to Buddy, tell Sherman she’s attracted to Buddy, notice that Buddy is obnoxious but believe in his goodness because he has nice eyes. Or discover Sherman with a bunch of women in his bedroom and not even hesitate to believe she caught him in an orgy. Which I guess is true, it’s technically the same body as Buddy Love, even if it looks different. But she should at least have a “wait… what?” moment.

Of course the Buddy Love formula is temporary, like Darkman’s melting faces, so his fingers will start to bulge and his belly will grow back with THE-MASK-like cg and he’ll have to run away. I guess that’s what made this feel a little big and summery for a comedy, but also it doesn’t hold up like the makeup mostly does. Look at this shit:

There’s a little bit of UHF style sketch comedy business where he’ll be watching TV and then daydream about being in whatever he’s watching. One of them starts as a medical drama where he’s in the emergency room getting fatter and fatter until he’s kaiju-sized and he blows up the city by farting. There really is more farting in this one than in 99% of movies, so if that’s your thing I have no choice but to recommend this to you.

I’m not a fart guy though and this one kinda makes me mad. It’s not so much the meanness of the fat jokes as the way it tries to pass them off as the opposite. It’s written by David Sheffield & Barry W. Blaustein (POLICE ACADEMY 2: THEIR FIRST ASSIGNMENT, COMING TO AMERICA, BOOMERANG) and Steve Oedekerk (HIGH STRUNG, ACE VENTURA: WHEN NATURE CALLS)
and Shadyac and I guarantee you some or all of them would tell you they love and root for Sherman. But also it sure is funny when there’s a fat guy being fat!

I remember noticing (most likely while cleaning theaters) that there was alot of R&B and new jack swing type stuff on the soundtrack, and I made the connection with Murphy’s “Party All the Time” past and thought oh, he insists on putting R&B in his movies even if they’re about a farting fat guy and a guy with a hamster for a dick. In retrospect, though, it might not have been him this time. Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons is the executive producer, and reportedly the one who suggested to producer Brian Grazer he should remake THE NUTTY PROFESSOR with a Black lead. So the soundtrack is on Def Jam and it also has some legit rappers on it. It’s Monica featuring Treach, and there’s a Jay-Z and Foxy Brown song and one featuring Raekwon. The album is certified platinum and made it to #1 on the R&B charts. I remember seeing at least one of the videos on MTV and laughing at the silliness of cutting between serious singers and random fat suit jokes.

I wonder if they considered asking Large Professor to do the soundtrack?

Four years later THE NUTTY PROFESSOR would have a sequel, NUTTY PROFESSOR II: THE KLUMPS, directed by Peter Segal. Murphy would go on to other downfalls and comebacks. Pinkett would become a bigger star and turn down the sequel to have kids and be in THE MATRIX RELOADED.

Some of the other people involved I don’t feel as positive about. Chappelle would become one of the best and most popular standups of our time but I can’t listen to his dumb ass anymore after he got stuck on that transphobic shit and refused to back down or learn anything. Plus remember when he brought Elon Musk on stage with him in San Francisco and was so confused that people wouldn’t stop booing? To me, you can’t make your living pretending to be a relatable guy after that. You’re done. But stadiums full of people disagree with me there.

I must unfortunately also mention that Simmons (Russell, not Richard) was accused of rape by six women, so he moved to Bali and hasn’t come back. The ol’ Steven Seagal move.

Maybe some of those aftermaths were predictable. Shadyac’s was not. After recovering from a serious bike accident in 2007 he tried to simplify his life by selling most of his possessions, moving into a trailer park, donating money to charity and leaving Hollywood. He made a documentary about it in 2010 and a football drama in 2018 but has stayed away from comedy for nearly 20 years.

I respect it. Some people really can change.