Nutty Professor II: The Klumps

This picture is a crass and obnoxious misfire from Murphy, primarily due to it's unbelievably undeserved PG-13 rating. Laced with profanity, sexual innuendo and bathroom humor, you have to wonder if anyone from the ratings board was awake when this film was screened. If they think this type of fare is appropriate for young teenagers, they must live on another planet. Of course, if it had been rated "R", perhaps my opinion would be different: Murphy is often at his funniest when he's profane & irreverant, but that's for my adult sensibilities, not for those of pre-pubescent or (just barely) post-pubescent sensibilities. Murphy should know better (and has shown better judgement with the "Dr. DoLittle" pics) than to pander this kind of junk to kids.

All that notwithstanding, Murphy again essays multiple roles (under tons of Makeup) as nearly every member of the Klump family. Murphy has already worn more makeup than Boris Karloff ever did in his whole lifetime, so he must enjoy it. Tech credits are good as Murphy appears with Murphy, Murphy and Murphy in umpteen scenes, proving that split screen has been adequately exceeded with digital replacement.

Half-witted plot has professor Klump developing a youth serum, while dealing with the personal inner demons of his "Buddy Love" personna (see first movie for more details). Klump, constantly embarrased by subliminal impulses from his "Buddy" personna, isolates & extracts the Buddy Love DNA, which later spills onto the laboratory pet dog, resulting in an incomprehensible reincarnation of Buddy in human form (but with latent doggy traits). Buddy is intent on stealing the youth formula. and a race ensues to see who can complete the deal, with several dilemmas thrown in along the way. Looks like the sreenwriters swiped a few ideas from early Star Trek episodes (see "The Enemy Within").

Never mind what happens next. Change the channel. And definitely avoid the "Uncensored Director's Cut"; it just makes a bad movie worse.

Frustrated by erratic and uncontrollable behavior at the hands of his troublesome alter ego, fed up Professor Sherman Klump undergoes a radical experiment that separates his personalities and allows scoundrel Buddy Love to become his own person. This time around they're battling each other for possession of invaluable scientific research which only further complicates matters in Sherman's personal life with colleague Jackson. Murphy, who's clearly having fun in his pull-out-all-the-stops portrayal of a horny grandmother, is as likable and energetic as he's ever been, but the script is awfully slim and throws out only a few genuinely funny ideas, which is a disappointment considering the impact of its predecessor. **

I loved the first film, it was funny and touching, and I feel it is underrated. This sequel is inferior, but I have honestly seen much worse sequels than this. There are some things wrong, such as the weak plot, uneven script, a slow beginning and uneven direction, but it is very amusing regardless. Thanks to some great sight gags such as the Fountain of Youth and the giant sex-mad hamster, another brilliant performance from Eddie Murphy and Janet Jackson very effective at playing it straight as the long suffering girlfriend. I also liked how it was filmed, and the score was lovely.

Overall, this is not a bad movie, not great, but not at all terrible.

6/10 Bethany Cox

Title: Nutty Professor II, The: The Klumps

Rating: **1/2 (out of 4)

Review: I've never been a die-hard Eddie Murphy fan, but that's of course not to say that he isn't funny or endearing, either. TRADING PLACES has always been my favorite Murphy movie, with the original BEVERLY HILLS COP a close second. He's a funny guy, and he has come further than he ever has had before with NUTTY II. The original 1996 film was both funny and enjoyable, if having the distinction of having occasional unnecessary bathroom humor. NUTTY II, however, is taken to extremes with the bathroom humor, everywhere from Grandma Klump giving Buddy Love oral sex in a hot tub to a hamster growing to epic proportions giving anal sex to Klump's boss, this film revels in bad taste way too much. Is the film funny? Sure it is, and it would have been a lot funnier if not for all the sickenening humor that we've seen dozens of times before (I don't blame Murphy particularly for this, considering the script was co-written by the guys who wrote AMERICAN PIE, and directed by Peter Segal, who has had his fair share of films with the same type of humor). They don't make the sick humor at least clever, which is the problem. THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and BASEKETBALL made their bathroom humor clever, but NUTTY II doesn't.

Murphy fans are sure to love this, though, because I was telling the truth before about him coming further than he ever has before. Playing no less than 8 roles (this might be some kind of record), his main character is Sherman Klump, a charmingly overweight professor who, in the original wanted to get rid of all the weight and became a stud in Buddy Love to make a beautiful co-ed (Jada Pinkett, whose missing prescence in the sequel is annoyingly unexplained) and eventually learns in the end that you should be yourself and that personality is way more important about looks. In the sequel, he can't shake off the DNA that Buddy has left inside of him, so he decides to attempt to get rid of it, but Buddy eventually (and predictably) regenerates himself with a new thing on his mind. Sherman, apparantly, has discovered the fountain of youth, and now Buddy is going to stop him and take the invention to his own credit. This film, apart from the original, focuses more on Sherman's family, right down to their gluttonous eating habits to their sexual fantasies. That's basically the whole plot in a nutshell. As I've said before, Murphy is terrific, and he's well worth watching in his eight roles, but this film will turn off a lot of viewers because all the sick humor, which I must say is more silly than funny, yet you find yourself for some reason still laughing to it (or rather, at it). Janet Jackson, as Eddie's love interest here, is OK, but she seems to be more important to the audience (any audience, not just the African-American audience) as a male fantasy figure than an actress. Overall, I'm looking at this film as another one to add to Murphy's list of commercial successes that is funny enough to make him a respectable comedian, but for once I want him to go more towards not grossing us out and finding a concept to appeal to anyone and everyone.

I expected to see lots of variations of the humor that The Nutty Professor (the Murphy version) used in the classic scene of the Klumps at the dinner table. Instead, what little humor this sequel had split time with disgust as the movie went mostly for sexy granny jokes.

The sad thing is, more fart humor would have been an *improvement.* This movie was boring. It was uninteresting. It missed numerous opportunities to have some fun. And it spent too much time showing off make-up and not enough time being entertaining.

Perhaps most painful to watch was Eddie Murphy just being Eddie Murphy (as Buddy Love). I never understand why some actors/directors think that if a character screams real loud and makes a face, it's funny. It is especially not funny when it happens 2-3 times. In the first movie, Buddy Love was funny (if cruel), and his observations were right on target. In The Klumps, Love is like a grown version of that Home Alone kid, when he grabs his face and just yells at the camera. Uh, if you are done shouting now, can we move on?

Janet Jackson was fluff. And I don't know what she has done with her chest, but it seems unusually huge here.

I suppose it would be appropriate to say how well done the make up is as Murphy plays his half-dozen or so characters. Yes, he makes them seem like different people, at least superficially. But none of the characters are really there, you know? They each have little tag lines, and maybe a quirk, and those lines and that quirk are used to death. Take the granny. Yep, she likes sex. She is a sex machine. She wants every man. OK, uh, so? We've seen that 20 times. Can we get to something new?

Overall, I feel sad to see the level Murphy's wit has been reduced to. He used to be more biting, more insightful and more, well, funny. Now he is a human cartoon. I gave this movie a 4.