Div's Crib
Nutty Professor (1996)
[Buy the Nutty Professor]
Director: Tom Shadyac
Starring:
Eddie Murphy ... Professor Sherman Klump/Buddy Love/Lance Perkins/Cletus 'Papa' Klump/Anna Pearl 'Mama' Jensen Klump/Ida Mae 'Granny' Jensen/Ernie Klump, Sr.
Jada Pinkett Smith ... Professor Carla Purty
James Coburn ... Harlan Hartley
Larry Miller ... Dean Richmond
David Chappelle ... Reggie Warrington
John Ales ... Jason
Patricia Wilson ... Grace (the Dean's Secretary)
Jamal Mixon ... Ernie Klump, Jr.
Nichole McAuley ... Fit Woman
Hamilton von Watts ... Health Instructor
Nutty Professor Review
Lucky for Eddie Murphy he got ahold of the rights to this 1963 Jerry Lewis classic before Jim Carrey did. Murphy had a comeback of sorts with his Jeckyll-and-Hyde-derived fable of awkward chemistry professor Sherman Klump (Murphy), who discovers a potion that transforms him into the suave, cocky lady-killer Buddy Love (also Murphy). The big difference between the two versions is that Murphy's Sherman is not only a nerdy intellectual but is also grossly obese, which provides the opportunity for some hilarious digital transformation effects, as well as some gentle satire of our culture's attitudes toward fat people.As he did in the hit Coming to America, Murphy plays multiple roles, and the scenes at the Klump family dinner table, in which he plays everybody, are brilliantly funny. (Murphy won the National Society of Film Critics' award for best actor of 1996 for these performances.) Lewis based his Buddy Love on the 1960s ideal of cool exemplified by Sinatra and the Rat Pack; Murphy stumbles a bit by playing up the oily phoniness of his latter-day Love a little too soon, but for the most part The Nutty Professor represents a welcome return to form for Eddie Murphy. -- Jim Emerson