On Wednesday, July 1st, 1992 – one day after Prince and the New Power Generation released “Sexy MF,” the first single from their symbol album – Eddie Murphy played a Sexy MF in the romantic comedy BOOMERANG. It’s the sophomore movie for HOUSE PARTY director Reginald Hudlin, but it’s written by Murphy’s COMING TO AMERICA scribes Barry W. Blaustein & David Sheffield (POLICE ACADEMY 2: THEIR FIRST ASSIGNMENT), based on an idea by Murphy.
Murphy plays Marcus Graham, hot shit New York advertising executive, who is welcomed to his office like everyone’s best friend or personal hero. He’s also the type of guy who checks out every female ass he crosses paths with, smiles and flatters his way into dates, and then immediately moves on to the next woman. “Once I hit it I lose interest, but that ain’t my fault!” he swears.
He’s definitely an asshole, but Murphy plays him with enough charm to balance some of that out. For example there’s a scene where director Nelson (Geoffrey Holder, ANNIE) excitedly presents a commercial with ridiculously suggestive shots of a model fellating a banana. Marcus tells him some parts to cut out but laughs and jokes around and just shows an appreciation for Nelson’s eccentricity. It’s not the usual thing where the successful boss guy has to be mean. Everybody loves him. (Of course, negative reviews interpreted this as Murphy having an ego. Once you’re as successful as him you get called out for playing cool guys.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Thoughts on DO THE RIGHT THING, 25 years later.
HOUSE PARTY 2 has that typical sequel problem: holy shit, the first time we were just doing what we wanted to do, now we gotta live up to people’s expectations. So in the beginning they kinda redo the beginning of the first one. It’s another fog machined dream of people dancing, but this time they got recent Academy Award winner Whoopi Goldberg to do a cameo as an evil professor. And there’s lightning and stuff. Spooky.
It goes without saying that this year of 2010 is the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie HOUSE PARTY starring the late ’80s/early ’90s pop rap duo Kid ‘n Play. The actual release was in March, of course, but we’re celebrating all year long. Please join me this week as we revisit all of Kid ‘n Play’s cinematic works and try to understand what the fuck we, as a nation, were trying to pull in the ’90s.
