Norbit

In “Dreamgirls,” Eddie Murphy proved his acting skills, surprising critics who thought his film career was heading downhill. To release “Norbit,” released in 2007, a little two months later is quite a risk. Early trailers would think this “Big Momma” doppelganger will ruin his dramatic clipper back on the ruins. Not so.

“Norbit” is a delightfully hilarious film that will make you laugh until you cheer. Murphy plays Norbit, a smart but socially challenged outsider whose life starts sadly as he’s thrown by his biological parents on the side of the road outside a combination Chinese restaurant/orphanage – where he is raised by Mr. Wong, also played by Murphy. When Kate, played by Thandie Newton, his first crush at the orphanage is adopted and leaves, Norbit is forced into a relationship with the obese, bad attitude Rasputia, also played by Murphy.

This forced relationship leads to an unhappy marriage as Rasputia gets more obese, and Norbit becomes more reclusive. However, when Kate comes back with her fiancé, played by Cuba Gooding Jr., Norbit plans to escape – and comedy ensues.

Everyone knows Murphy’s talent for impressions (fans will remember his sketches from Saturday Night Live and his famous comedy performance, “Raw” from the 80s), but in “Norbit” he perfects the costume and prosthetics transformative performance he helped invent in “The Nutty Professor.”

He completely enters into the personas of Wong and Rasputia, moving them safely beyond the area between character and caricature, and then using them to satirize cultural issues like racism and obesity. Thus far as the prosthetics go, they’re amazing.

The result is a comedy that is as completely unruly as it is ridiculous. Director Brian Robbins keeps the pace up, clearly giving Murphy full creativity, and screenplay writers Jay Scherick and David Ronn keep the laughs – despite that Murphy’s innate comedian is responsible for Rasputia’s repetitive “How YOU Doin’” catchphrase, sure to be quoted from teenagers everywhere after seeing this. I wouldn’t be surprised if Murphy took that catchphrase from Wendy Williams.

Gooding is sadly wasted, and Newton, as endearing as she is, doesn’t truly convince us when her character goes back and forth with Norbit on emotional motivation, but Murphy is helped by Terry Crews, Lester “Rasta” Speight, Clifton Powell, Marlon Wayans, the late Charlie Murphy (his real-life brother) as the voice of a dog, and Eddie Griffin and Katt Williams as “Pope Sweet Jesus” and “Lord Have Mercy,” respectively.

When the script falls (and it does, continuously), Murphy carries bravely on in character – and in more cases, than can be counted, he forces the editor’s hand with a gesture, facial expression, or final improvisation from Rasputia. The result is a performance that may exist in complete contrast with his Oscar-winning role as James “Thunder” Early – but it’s in every way entertaining.

I remember seeing trailers for this movie and I thought it would be funny. I saw it about a decade ago when I was either on break between classes or I was done for the day. I was sitting in the student lounge on a laptop that I borrowed from the front desk watching this movie, I was laughing the entire time. I think a lot of the critics thought this film wasn’t a good comedy, but I don’t agree with them. I would say check this movie out if you’re a fan of any of the cast members on here, especially Murphy playing different characters. You will laugh a lot at this film, as I know I did.

Alright, everyone, we have now reached the end of “Cuba Gooding Jr. Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed it and has seen the films that I recommended. See everyone next month for more excitement.

Rat Race

Millionaire Donald Sinclair leaves $2 million in a locker at Silver City train station, 700 miles outside Las Vegas, and challenges a group of Vegas tourists to race to get it. The first to reach the chest gets the money.

Jo Berry said in his review, “Back in the 1980s - before he made sob-fest 'Ghost' and the teeth-gnashingly awful King Arthur saga, 'First Knight' - the words 'directed by Jerry Zucker' on the screen heralded a stupidly funny movie, be it 'Ruthless People', 'Airplane' or even the terribly silly 'Top Secret'.” With “Rat Race,” released in 2001, his first film in six years, Zucker returns to his originality, giving a silly, old-fashioned adventure-comedy that may not be too much to think about but will make a person laugh uproariously.

The story is simple (and similar to 1963’s “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”). A group of different tourists in Las Vegas each win a special coin that lets them take part in a race organized by strange millionaire Donald Sinclair, played by John Cleese. He has put $2 million in a locker 700 miles away, and whoever gets there first can keep the money, while Sinclair’s rich friends place bets on who that might be.

Look at the group Sinclair has put together. There’s stumbling Italian Mr. Pollini, family man Randy (Jon Lovitz), who drags his unsuspecting family with him, dumb and dumber brothers Blaine (Vince Vieluf) and Duane (Seth Green), uptight law students Nick (Breckin Meyer), disgraced referee Owen (Cuba Gooding Jr.), and a recently reunited mother and daughter (Whoopi Goldberg and Lanei Chapman).

Berry noted, “The screwball gags come fast and furious, involving everything from a flying cow to Hitler's car, an eccentric roadside squirrel seller and a bus full of Lucille Ball impersonators.” Even though they all don’t get scored, enough of them do to help you forget the small aggravations elsewhere in the movie. For example, why does John Cleese have huge, white, false teeth? Why is Rowan Atkinson just playing Mr. Bean but with a strange foreign accent? And what’s with the incorrectly sentimental ending? Berry is right when he said, “Quibbles aside, this is nicely played by the ensemble cast (we'll forgive Cleese his dentures as his performance is deliciously nutty) and packed with lunacy that will keep you sniggering long after you've left the cinema.”

Former Saturday Night Live writer Andy Breckman keeps adding on to the jokes for this silly chase movie. It’s incredibly silly, but also gut-wrenchingly funny.

I heard about this movie from Doug Walker when he did his “Top 10 Favorite Comedies” list a long time ago. After seeing the movie, I can say that I give it a high recommendation. You will get a good laugh at watching this and I think everyone will love it. If you’re a fan of any of the cast members in this movie, then I highly suggest all of you see this movie.

Next week, I will end “Cuba Gooding Jr Month” with a movie that I found funny, although the critics may not agree.

What Dreams May Come

Vincent Ward’s “What Dreams May Come,” released in 1998, is so breathtaking, so beautiful, and so bold in its imagination, that it’s a surprise at the end to find it doesn’t finally deliver. It takes the audience to the emotional edge but it doesn’t push them over. It ends in a curiously unconvincing way – a conventional ending in a movie that for most of its length has been daring and visionary.

Roger Ebert said in his review, “So, yes, I have my disappointments with it. But I would not want them to discourage you from seeing it, because this is a film that even in its imperfect form shows how movies can imagine the unknown, can lead our imaginations into wonderful places.” It has heartbreakingly powerful performances by Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra. The movie is so good because it shows us how it could have been better: It appears to go for a great leap, we can see it coming, and then it settles. If Hollywood is determined to short-change us with a necessary happy ending, then it shouldn’t torture us with a movie that deserves better.

Ebert admitted, “I hesitate to reveal too many secrets, but the film's set-up has been so thoroughly publicized that by now you probably already know certain key facts. Save the review until later if you don't.”

People knew from the ads and the trailers that Chris and Annie, played by Williams and Sciorra, have a Cute Meet when their boats crash on a Swiss lake. They marry, have two children (Jessica Brooks Grant and Josh Paddock), and are happy, but both of the children are killed in an accident. Annie has a breakdown, and Chris nurses her through, art works as therapy, they are somehow putting their lives back together, and then Chris is killed.

The film follows him into the afterlife and creates it with visuals that seem borrowed from his memories and imagination. Ebert said, “In one sequence that is among the most visually exciting I have ever seen, he occupies a landscape that is a painting, and as he plucks a flower it turns to oil paint in his hand. Other parts of this world seem cheerfully assembled from the storage rooms of images we keep in our minds: Renaissance art, the pre-Raphaelites, greeting cards, angel kitsch (cherubs float past on plump clouds). Later, when Chris ventures into Satan’s home, the images are darker and more fearsome--Bosch crossed with Dali.”

There is a guide in the next world named Albert, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. Is he all that he appears to be? Ebert said, “Now we have ventured beyond the information in the ads, and I will be more circumspect. The story, inspired by a novel by Richard Matheson, is founded on the assumption that heaven exists in a state of flux, that its inhabitants assume identities that please themselves, or us; that having been bound within one identity during life, we are set free.” Heaven, in one sense, means becoming who you want to be.

And Satan’s home? “It is for those who don’t know they’re dead,” says Albert. Or they know they’re dead but don’t know what the deal is. Or they won’t go along with the deal. Many of those in Satan’s home are guilty of the greatest sin against God, which is despair: They believe they are beyond hope.

After the death of her children and husband, Annie has gone into depression, commits suicide, and goes to Satan’s home. Chris wants to find her: “I’m her soul mate.” Albert says that’s not possible, “Nothing will make her recognize you.” However, he acts as a guide, and Chris goes into Satan’s home, which, like heaven, has been realized with a visual intensity and originality that is astonishing. In this film, the path to Satan’s home is paved, not with good intentions, but with the faces of the doomed, bitter, and complaining (the face and voice of Chris’s father are played by the German director Werner Herzog).

What happens then, what happens throughout the film, is like nothing you have seen before. Ebert noted, “Vincent Ward is a New Zealand director whose works have not always reached a large audience, but have always dared for big ideas and bold visuals to express them. He made "The Navigator" (1988), about medieval Englishmen who tunnel to escape the plague--and emerge in the present. And then, in 1993, he made the great "Map of the Human Heart," about the odyssey of an Eskimo boy from Alaska in the 1930s to London in the war, and from a great love affair to high adventure.”

Ebert continued, “"What Dreams May Come" ends, like "The Navigator," with the characters seeking their destiny in a cathedral--but this one, like many of the film's images, is like none you have seen before. It is upside-down, the great vaulted ceilings providing a floor and a landscape. Since I have mentioned Herzog, I might as well quote his belief that our century is "starving for great images."” This film provides them and also provides quiet moments of pleasant human nature, as when a character played by Rosalind Chao explains why she appears to be an Asian flight attendant, and when another, played by Max von Sydow, explains the rules of the game as he understands them.

Robin Williams somehow has a quality that makes him seem at home in imaginary realms. Remember him in “Popeye,” “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” “Toys,” “Jumanji,” and as the Genie in “Aladdin.” Ebert said, “There is a muscular reality about him, despite his mercurial wit, that anchors him and makes the fantastic images around him seem almost plausible.” He is good, too, at emotion: He brings us along with him. In Annabella Sciorra, he has a co-star whose own character is very unhappy and yet touching. Her sin of despair was committed, we believe because she loved so much and was so happy, she could not exist in the absence of those feelings.

Ebert said, “And yet, as I've suggested, the movie somehow gathers all these threads and its triumphant art direction and special effects, and then doesn't get across the finish line with them. I walked out of the theater sensing that I should have felt more, that an opportunity had been lost.” “What Dreams May Come” takes us too far and risks too much to turn conventional at the end. It could have been better. It could perhaps have been the best film that year. Whatever its shortcomings, it is a film to treasure.

This is one of those tear-jerker movies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if people cried while watching it. You should see this movie because it is very emotional and you will love it. I remember seeing a part of this movie with my sister years ago, but when I went back and saw the whole film, I had no idea it was “this” emotional. Check it out and have a good cry.

Next week I will be looking at another comedy in “Cuba Gooding Jr. Month.” Sorry for the late response. I took a nap, not realizing it, and woke up having to rush through stuff.

Jerry Maguire

I was going back and forth on what I should review for this month. After much consideration, I have decided to review movies I have seen that have Cuba Gooding Jr. in them. Let’s not waste any time. Let’s jump in with the 1997 classic, “Jerry Maguire.”

­Seeing his world – mainly as a sports agent – shattering around him, Jerry Maguire, played by Tom Cruise, writes a mission statement during a nervous breakdown asking for a gentler way to business. This causes him to get fired, but he manages to save one client – football player Rod Tilbrook (Cuba Gooding Jr), and assistant Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger). Jerry is about to learn a lot about life.

Adam Smith said in his review, “If you don't walk out of Jerry Maguire with a goofy grin the size of Alaska plastered across your face, check your pulse - you're probably dead.” Director Cameron Crowe has written and directed a smart, funny, shamelessly upbeat romantic comedy and the icing is that this was the finest performance of Tom Cruise’s career.

Jerry is a sports agent on the edge of a breakdown. He’s rich, successful, and has a love life that falls under “rampant.” However, he’s not happy. He looks around and sees a business sinking into sarcasm. A world where a kid can’t ask a sports player to do so much as autograph a baseball card without endorsement deals and counter-deals racing to the front. In one long lonely night of the soul, he writes a “mission statement” demanding a more genuine approach, delivers it to his colleagues, and is instantly terminated from his job.

Smith noted, “With only one desultory client left, Rod Tidwell (played with screwballish energy by Gooding Jnr.), a second rate footballer with a surfeit of energy off the field but precious little on it, Maguire decides to go it alone, failing to persuade any of his colleagues to accompany him apart from lovestruck single parent from accounts Dorothy Boyd (the excellent Zellweger). Things don't run smoothly (natch) for the isolated couple: Maguire is screwed by both ex-colleagues and clients, and although he is attracted enough to his partner and her sprog to smooch, shag and finally wed, the marriage is in trouble within weeks with the outside world's cynicism and Jerry's escalating emotional crisis leaching in and poisoning the familial nest.”

Smith continued, “That this doesn't degenerate into an experience akin to being hit full in the face by the Tate & Lyle express is a testament both to Crowe's (director of Say Anything and Singles) script and direction plus a new maturity and confidence in Cruise's performance. Crowe takes a dessicated and predictable genre and invests it with a delightfully off-beam sensibility.” Scenes never go exactly as you expect. Take the opening montage where a boxer-shorted Cruise narrates his dive into extreme doubt while simultaneously weakening the corniness by admitting that this is all a little “touchy-feely.”

Then there’s Cruise, who for the first time in his career may not have required defense. Smith said, “Not satisfied to deliver the kind of by-the-numbers winsome romantic lead that a few years ago he'd probably have been satisfied with, here he fleshes Jerry's struggle with a developing disgust for the world to the point where it's finally possible to forget that this was the man who made Cocktail and Days Of Thunder.”

Other casts included in this sterling supporting performance are Bonnie Hunt as Dorothy’s concerned, distrustful sister, plus a ruffle-haired kid, played by Jonathan Lipnicki, who’ll, as Smith put it, “have anyone leaning towards broodiness, repapering the box-room and spending a fortune down Mothercare.” Also, comedian Aries Spears plays Cuba Gooding Jr.’s brother.

“Jerry Maguire” is that rare movie that reminds you why you like movies in the first place. Be nice to yourself. Go see it.

This film is famous for the lines, “Show me the money,” “You had me at hello,” “You complete me,” and “Help me help you.” I remember this movie was talked about a lot when it was released, but I didn’t see it until about 10-11 years ago. This movie had Tom Cruise not playing his typical self but was quite different from any role he had played at the time. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’re missing out. This is a film that is not one to be missed.

Look out next week when I review a tear-jerker in “Cuba Gooding Jr. Month.”