Review of “Norbit”
What on earth was Eddie Murphy thinking? Maybe he was so busy playing three major roles in this comedy that he forgot to check whether it was actually funny. With hardly enough material to fill a five-minute stand up routine, a drearily unoriginal plot, and a collection of unlovable template characters, this one’s only for the desperate.
Norbit (Eddie Murphy) is the ugliest child in an orphanage run by Mr Wong (Eddie Murphy). Norbit is a geeky, badly dressed loser with an underbite and, after his childhood sweetheart Kate is adopted by a family, he is left without a buddy and becomes the target of bullying and mockery. Enter Rasputia (Eddie Murphy) whose elephantine frame, savage temper, and three thug brothers enable Norbit to finally find some respect and a family life. From this establishing story, filmed in a glowing haze of enchanted irony, we spiral through time to the present. Norbit has grown older, Rasputia wider and the story more desperate. When Kate (Thandie Newton) suddenly appears back in town and the orphanage comes under threat of being turned into a strip club, the hapless Norbit must become a real man.
Had Murphy, who also wrote the story and co-produced the film, pushed the idea further towards mock fairytale, this might have worked. It contains enough elements of a Cinderella story (complete with three ugly brothers) to entertain as modern parody, but instead the film becomes a vehicle for an endless and sometimes tasteless fat gag, with Rasputia squeezing her flesh into everything from car seats to waterslides. Director Brian Robbins loses control of the style with characters deliberately over the top one moment and romantically real the next. Only Cuba Gooding Jnr as Kate’s competing love interest manages to steer a consistent course through the chaos. Most bizarre is the lack of a clear intended audience. With a few snips in the sexual references area, it might have appealed to young children. The tagline for the film reads “Have you ever made a Big mistake?” I’m afraid Eddie Murphy has.
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