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Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 17:04:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: maillist@moviejuice.com
Subject: [MV] MovieJuice! - LIFE - Crimes and MisdeMurphy
LIFE - CRIMES AND MISDEMURPHY
by Mark Ramsey
http://www.moviejuice.com
April 17, 1999
True story: Eddie Murphy's wrapping The Nutty Professor, so he dreams up a new project and takes the notion to producer Brian Grazer. As Grazer tells it, "Eddie came to me and said, 'Life,' just a simple word. And I said, "We'll help. We'll get a writer."
Duh.
To translate for those outside the movieland scene, Eddie said, "Brian, I'm going to pick a word at random from that Random House Dictionary, the one where they mix up all the houses. It could be any word - except 'transvestite.' It won't be that word! I don't pick up that word, I just give it an occasional ride! So I'll pick the word and I want you to make me a star vehicle full of dialogue and shit. Make it about something, and what not. Where there's no dialogue, we'll just mumble."
To which Brian replied, "I may be white as Casper the Ghost, but I'm still a bad-ass motherfucker, Eddie! Know what I'm sayin'? I'm down wit dat! All the best movies have words. Damn! I'm just glad your word's not "Onomatopoeia" or "Triskadekaphobia" or some shit like that."
Life begins in the '30s, an era before stars began freaking out and incoherently wandering through heavy traffic on Ventura Boulevard, waving a gun, and screaming obscenities at cars. Before "dehydration, overwork, and exhaustion" became available by the pint or the gel-cap. Whatever happened to those good old days of studio-financed abortions and sham marriages?
Here's the scene: Eddie and Marty are in the clink for life for a crime they didn't commit. The world around them changes. Even Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman come and go. Yes, check the currency exchange ratio, it's time to redeem your shawshanks. Redeem your Shawshanks now! Couldn't somebody have script-doctored some DNA testing into this flick and saved us all some time? Give us free!
All those years they're locked up in Mississippi. I can say what I want about Mississippi, of course, because the Internet missed the memo on Mississippi just as the telephone did a hundred years earlier. Mississippi is the Bermuda Triangle of Teeth! It's the only state with street signs cautioning "In-Bred Pedestrian Crossing." In fact, shoes were introduced only in 1993. Unfortunately "footwear" constituted a new species, thus upsetting the delicate ecological balance and instantly qualifying for endangered status.
In addition to Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, this flick stars Obba BabatundΘ, cousin of hair-care magnate Jojoba BabatundΘ, making actor Obba the family's Babablack sheep.
I was surprised to see makeup wizard Rick Baker in the credits. What is this, The American Werewolf Goes Up The River? Then I realized our heroes age 60 years in the space of two hours, thus requiring lots of fine but extraordinarily distracting makeup and the strange feeling that you're watching Roots with pie jokes.
In fact, after the makeup "Old Eddie" is a dead ringer for Bill Cosby, meaning Life is as close to Ghost Dad II as I ever hope to get.
As usual, Eddie's better than his material. The more distance I get from Life, the more distance I wish I had. Unfortunately, escape was impossible. Warning: See Life and you'll need the Governor to commute your sentence. Save your shawshanks to redeem another day.
And save me a Life-boat.
Copyright 1999 Mark Ramsey. All rights reserved. NO PORTION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
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