The Nutty Professor 2: Facing The Fear

Now it’s time to wrap up “The Nutty Professor” movies by talking about the 2008 movie, “The Nutty Professor 2: Facing the Fear.” Never heard of it? Well neither did I until rather recently. First off, I would just like to point out that there seems to be confusion over the title to this movie. The movie is simply titled “The Nutty Professor,” like the original Jerry Lewis movie from 1963. Turns out that “The Nutty Professor 2: Facing the Fear” was simply the working title. It is still listed under that title when you look under the IMDB. Gino Sassani said, “Whatever the title, you should know that this isn’t your father’s Nutty Professor.” This version is a CG animated flick, but don’t expect the movie to be on the same level of quality as Shrek or Pixar. The budget is considerably lower, and you can clearly see that in the final product when you think, “This is looks like something made out of the SIMS game.”

Jerry Lewis returns to his iconic role of Julius Kelp, the intelligent but often clumsy professor who made a formula that could bring out a person’s inner strength. The result was like a spoof on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde theme. This time the Hyde character was a smooth sophisticated opposite of the ordinarily awkward Professor Kelp. Of course, like Mr. Hyde, the alter-ego caused a whole lot of trouble. It’s many years later, and we are introduced to Harold Kelp, the grandson of Professor Kelp. Harold is just as socially awkward and shares the brilliant mind of his famous grandfather. His inventions, however, have a tendency to fall just short of making the finish, and as the film starts the neighbors, one of them voiced by Jerry Lewis’ daughter, Danielle Lewis, have made an angry mob, complete with a torch, to do something about his dangerous inventions. Just as they are about to attack, Harold gets an acceptance letter from Cerebrum University, where his grandfather is the head of the science department. Glad that he will be moving away, the mob cheers him to his new school…and home, far away from them. At the school, Harold finds it hard to fit in, until he discovers his grandfather’s formula and sets free his own Mr. Hyde, in the form of Jack. Harold must fight with his other half to finally learn the secret to facing his own self-confidence issues, and going up against his own fear…literally.

The film will likely be loved to the younger audiences on one level or another, but it will fall quite flat for anyone expecting to be taken back to 1963 and the original film experience. Sassani admitted, “This film is so loaded with a lot predictable contrivances that it just won’t wear well for the adults. The final confrontation is completely silly and makes little to no sense. It’s a video game kind of battle that might have been better fit for an old Atari 2600.” Drake Bell, who you might remember from that Nickelodeon sitcom “Drake and Josh,” voiced Harold Kelp/Jack. He’s fine, but there isn’t anything energetic in his portrayal to make the character in any way interesting. Jerry Lewis does link the two ideas together by providing the voice of Professor Kelp, but it wasn’t really his voice that made him so successful. Lewis was more of a physical comic. In this CG flick a delivered character just can’t mimic the antics that made Lewis so funny. Sassani said, “Even the distinctive qualities of his voice are gone, covered by decades of age on the actor. On its own this is a fair to mediocre piece of child entertainment.” If you compare it to the original, it is something significantly less.

Here’s the final verdict from Sassani, “It’s been a long while since I saw the original film. I remember it did contain plenty of laughs, however. These laughs are really missing everywhere in this CG creation. Let’s not even talk about the fatty Eddie Murphy films that might have ruined that franchise forever.” Here we return to the original ideas, if only to serve an oversimplified, face your fears, moral. What does it bring to the franchise? Absolutely nothing! I would not recommend this movie at all because it is definitely below average. But I don’t think it’s like an atrocious movie that I wish I didn’t see, just your basic bad sequel.

Thank you for joining in on “The Nutty Professor Month.” I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have. Stay tuned for what next month will have in store. I’ll see you then.