The Nutty Professor (1996)

The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000)

Bowfinger (1999)

Life (1999)

The Nutty Professor films are a mixed bag. They’re both full of crude humor, but underneath all the jokes about flatulence, the first film is actually a sensitive movie about a good and intelligent man who is cursed by genetics to be fat and stay that way and who craves romance. His experiments result in a potion that allows him to either be thin, handsome, and suave – and amoral – or he can be his own sweet self and remain fat. The second movie just abandons most of the sweetness of the first movie in favor of being as crude as is humanly possible.

Bowfinger is a different kind of film for Eddie Murphy. In fact, in many ways it is more Steve Martin’s film than it is Eddie Murphy’s. Murphy plays two brothers – one is a successful film star – Kit Ramsey – that Martin’s character (Bowfinger) is trying to have as the star of his low budget feature without Kit knowing it. Murphy also plays Jiff Ramsey, Kit’s brother, who Bowfinger hires as a double for Kit in the long and stunt shots. It’s a fairly clever satire on the film industry in general and on one religion in particular that possesses two things – no sense of humor and a large element of control over the stars in its congregation, of which Kit Ramsey is one.

Life is my least favorite film of the bunch, but that is probably because I’ve never cared for Martin Lawrence. However, I do have to admit he’s easier to take here that usual because he actually comes across as someone who is not as hateful as he is in all of his other films. This is the story of two men (Lawrence and Murphy) who are sentenced to life for a murder they didn’t commit after commiting a very petty crime back in the days of prohibition. The men start out disliking each other, but over the years a kind of friendship grows as they learn to survive in prison and look for ways to escape that never work out.
Rating: 4 / 5