My guess is, most of the reviews of "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" will deliver perfunctory praise to the makeup and move on quickly to the comedy. But we're not talking garden-variety "makeup" here. We're talking about a rather astonishing creative collaboration between Eddie Murphy and makeup artist Rick Baker, with considerable help from director Peter Segal and cinematographer Dean Semler, to populate the movie with eight different characters, all played by Murphy, all convincing, each with its own personality. This is not just a stunt. It is some kind of brilliance.
That does appear in a comedy of determined vulgarity. Some of the long sessions which last five hours in makeup do put at the service of scenes which has giant hamsters breeding and farts that are flammable. The story wanders, but this movie is frequently very funny and nowhere near less than amazing, as long as you consider the work and imagination that went into Murphy’s creation of the Klump family (Sherman, Granny, Mama, Papa, Papa’s younger self and Ernie) and two other characters, Lance Perkins and the evil alter ego Buddy Love.
Murphy has a mysterious gift for imitation, for creating new characters through the talent of improvisation. We, as an audience, first saw this when he was on “Saturday Night Live,” obviously. Ebert mentioned, “In Steve Martin's underappreciated "Bowfinger" (1999), he plays two characters more or less without help from makeup: the movie superstar Kit Ramsey, who looks a lot like Murphy, and a doofus named Jiff, who looks a lot like Kit and is hired to play his double. This isn't simply a double role. Kit and Jiff are two different people, and Jiff is actually the funnier and more involving one; he was so abashed when he found out they wanted to put him in a movie that we couldn't help liking him.”
The entire Klump family that is played entirely by Murphy in this sequel are much broader characters, and yet Professor Sherman Klump, the family protagonist, also has that pull of sweetness: He is likable, vulnerable and naïve, and we can understand why his research assistant Denise, played by Michael Jackson’s sister, Janet Jackson (another singer), might want to marry him. We understand him even better when he hires a Mexican band to stand under her window while he sings to her, although that romantic scene is interrupted when Buddy Love takes control of him.
Ebert said it best when he stated, “Buddy Love is essentially Tourette's syndrome personified.” Buddy appears without saying again, taking over Sherman’s personality, ejecting insulting comments and embarrassing Sherman in public. Ebert mentioned, “His nuisance value multiplies when Sherman tries a risky genetic split, externalizing Buddy but causing his own intelligence to start shrinking.” One of the funniest twists in this movie is the way the tables get turned on Buddy. A strand of his DNA gets crossed with the genetic code of a dog, forcing Buddy to show instinctual behaviors of a dog at every single inconvenient moment. You could say that this is somewhat wonderful when Sherman can distract his enemy by forcing him to play fetch.
I believe Ebert is right when he said, “Animal jokes have been obligatory in raunchy comedies since "There's Something About Mary," and "Nutty II" builds to some kind of a crescendo as Dean Richmond (Larry Miller), Sherman's superior at the university, is assaulted by a giant hamster. How this happens and why is immaterial; what is important is the way it leads up to the line, "Do you think he'll call?" Eddie Murphy has been a star since 1981, a movie star since "48 Hrs." He started strong but has made more than his share of bad movies ("Vampire In Brooklyn" was perhaps the low point). In "Bowfinger" and "Nutty II," he seems to be in a new flowering of his career.” Murphy seems to be home with his comedy, willing to disappear into his characters, ready to find laughs with behavior and personality instead of forcing them with punch lines. Not only does he play eight different characters here, but he makes them different and (within the broad requirements of the story) believable.
Sherman obviously is the main character, a research professor who is brilliant, innocent and obese. We like him and feel for him. Janet Jackson is warm and supportive as his girlfriend, and they have some touching scenes together (Ebert mentioned, “Borrowed from "Charly")” when his intelligence starts to decline and his genius to fade. In a movie so hoarse, so scatological, so optimistically offensive, it is a little surprising to find yourself actually caring for a character who is made mostly out of Latex makeup, but there you have it.
Overall, I think this is a funny sequel, and I don’t hate it like everyone else. If you liked the first movie, then definitely check out the sequel because it will make you laugh, and most importantly, feel and route for Sherman. Hold on to your seats because Friday I will wrap up the “Ocean’s Trilogy” with the final installment for this month.
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