timmyhollywood

I walked out an hour or so in. This was one of those movies you might pick for a date night. It sounds good. Problem is, unless you like actors sitting in a room talking nonstop, it's a snooze fest. Whatever might be interesting or daring here about making Hermann Goring a "complex" character, or about how the famous Nuremberg trials came to be is lost here. Pat direction, uninspired cinematography, and Remi Malek smirking. Does he ever not smirk? I don't know what else to say. See The Zone of Interest instead. This was like watching paint dry. 5/10.

Yikes. Bit of a drop in quality from the first episode. This is to be expected - the pilot episode of serial shows are often honed to perfection in order to grab and secure an audience. Then in the next episode, you can often feel the storytellers let off the gas a little. That's the case here, with a whole lot of characters standing around and talking, telling us things we already know, or framing up things we are already expecting. Certainly some of this reaction is subjective -the momentum of epsiode 1 was so great this reduction in pace is jarring- yet some of it feels like the dreaded "filler," when serial storytelling resorts to stretching out the material to hit a certain episode quota. Hopefully the next episode gets back some of that initial mojo.

Documentary. Biography. Biopic. These words used to mean something. Legendary documentarian Albert Maysles described filming a person's life as "direct cinema." Nothing got in the way of the viewer vicariously experiencing the thing documented. That was the point.

Here, in "Being Eddie," like with "Sly" or "Arnold," everything is in the way. Their egos. The brand they seek to protect. Boundaries and rules for what can be shown or said. Oh, Eddie's brother Charlie died?? Oh, he remarried? Wait, how many kids does he have?? Hold up, he had a feud with SNL?? These interesting pieces of his life would reveal him, but they're glossed over. It's like Eddie himself says about experiencing grief or loss- you just "touch it" and then quickly back away.

I'll say this: I did find it interesting he never drank or tried drugs. And I can appreciate his commitment to his kids. "If you put your kids first, you never make a wrong decision." It's refreshing to hear a star cite that "peace of mind" is the goal in life.

At the same time, it's the contradictions that would make an interesting documentary, and interesting subject - that Murphy seems centered and at peace yet felt so wounded by a David Spade SNL bit in 1995 that he severed ties with the show. Or that he's such an "East Coaster" but lives in California - why, exactly? Or that he's done as much as he has for the Black community and has a white wife (I don't care who you love, but it surely is an aspect of his life worth lingering on for a minute or two!) We don't even get a word from her, or how they met, or what it's like being married to Dr. Dolittle.

He has a massive (I mean massive) mansion that seems exorbitant even for a movie star. Did he make other investments? Was it all Shrek money? The idea that these things are too "personal" really contradicts the whole point of a biography. Instead, what we get is a paean. Seinfeld and Chappelle singing his praises, Murphy himself comparing his fame and talent to that of Jimi Hendrix.

This careful, curated portrayal of a man accomplished far less than I think was intended, and for that, a score of 6/10. Or, if what was intended was to simply paint a rosy picture of his supposed greatness, 6/10 for that too.