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Nutty
Professor II: The Klumps (2000)
Directed by Peter Segal Cast: Eddie Murphy, Larry Miller, Janet Jackson, John Ales, Gabriel Williams What Lies Beneath (2000)
Which is worse: a movie that actually starts off strong but then trails off so badly that you're trying not to chuckle in derision or a movie that's awful from the get-go and only gets worse? If you hate having your hopes dashed, you'll choose the first option; if you just hate horrendous movies, you'll go for the second. Of course, if you're smart, you won't see either What Lies Beneath or Nutty Professor 2, two contenders for the ten worst movies of 2000. In an interesting coincidence, Nutty Professor 2 starts off where Big Momma's House ended: in a church with a gospel choir singing "Oh, Happy Day" while our hero, in this case Professor Klump, is matched with his dream woman. I could spend an entire review ticking off the similarities between the two films, but there is one crucial difference: Big Momma's House was funny. In case you're one of the 28 people who missed the first Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor (as opposed to the Jerry Lewis original), our protagonist is Sherman Klump, a genius scientist who happens to weigh 450 pounds (or so it seems). Despite his girth, Sherman's gentle humor and thoughtfulness make him a virtual babe magnet. In the first movie, he got Jada Pinkett to dance with his big self, and this time around it's Janet Jackson (as fellow scientist Denise Gaines) who looks past Sherman's ample surface to see his inner qualities. Unfortunately, there's more to Sherman's inner child than first meets the eye. For lurking just beneath is Buddy Love, an obnoxious, sex-obsessed loud-mouth who periodically takes over Sherman's body. Fearing that Buddy is going to ruin his relationship with Denise, Sherman embarks on a quest to extricate Buddy's mutated DNA from his own; but this only results in Buddy becoming a full-fledged entity, complete with a strange attraction to dogs (please don't ask why). Furthermore, by altering his DNA, Sherman has somehow affected his own intelligence (to say nothing of the movie's director, Peter Segal), which descends in direct proportion to the audience's incredulity. Sherman's solution: to re-ingest Buddy Love, thereby righting his faulty DNA. The audience's solution: leave while you still have the chance. There's no hope for the movie critic, though. As much as I wanted to flee like Marlowe heading back to England (the horror, the horror), I'm required to stay till the very bitter end. So I started thinking of useful comparisons, and I was strangely reminded of kids movies I saw in the '70s, like Benji and The Shaggy D.A. The plot is ludicrous, the acting as broad as Sherman's waistline, and the movie wraps up with a chase scene that defies description (picture adults chasing a splotch of blue goo; I am not making this up). If this is a kids movie though, why are all the jokes about sex? But the movie can still be funny, can't it? Oh, if only that were true. While Sherman's family, the titular Klumps, were my favorite part of the first adventure, here they're reduced to farting, sex-crazed old people. The only funny lines have been played to death in the commercials, and many of their scenes don't have a single joke. It's a sad commentary when the biggest laughs arise from a enormous hamster having sex with a man. Even Mama Klump, who is a wonderful character and worthy of her own movie, has little to do but chant "Sherman, Sherman, Sherman." You have to give Eddie Murphy some credit--he wears the makeup well, and he's still sweet as Sherman Klump. But Buddy Love has turned into the worst sort of caricature, and Murphy's intelligence must be severely degraded to think that Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield's script was worth thinking about, much less filming. **** What is there to say about What Lies Beneath? Michelle Pfeiffer is terrific, the first half of the movie is scary, the second half is a howler (that's bad), and Harrison Ford is a stiff. Watching What Lies Beneath, I realized it's not that hard to make a scary movie. Doors that move on their own, strange reflections in the mirrors, sinister neighbors, eerie music, people leaping out unexpectedly, a ghost story or two--any of those will get the mind racing. Unfortunately, director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) forgets these tricks in the last half of the movie. Maybe the thought of a scene where a bathtub takes 20 minutes to fill clouded his judgment. Or maybe the frustration of having to work with Harrison Ford got to be too much. I'm sorry, but someone has to say it: Harrison Ford is embarrassing himself. I know he still has the face that makes a large section of the population swoon, but it's clear that he doesn't care any more. He sleptwalk through his last two pictures (Random Hearts and Six Days, 1001 Nights--at least that's what it felt like), and in Beneath a cardboard cutout would've been a better choice. Even in his scenes where he has to act scared or menacing, he looks like he'd rather be watching re-runs of American Graffiti. As would I! It's particularly frustrating because Michelle Pfeiffer is wonderful. As Claire Spencer, a middle-aged woman who believes a ghost is in the house, she has a perfect combination of vulnerability and resourcefulness. In one scene, she's pooh-poohing what she saw in the mirror and, in the next, she's afraid to look behind the closet door. She's so convincing that we're afraid, too. And when Clark Gregg's script concocts a ludicrous red herring (an irritating rip-off of Rear Window), Pfeiffer is up to the task. But even she can't move the black obelisk that is Harrison Ford. J. Robert Parks 8/1/2000 Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps What Lies Beneath |
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