TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070692/0706420.000

Text File | 1993-04-04 | 5.7 KB | 117 lines

                                                                                CINEMA, Page 68

Do You Still Love Eddie?

Murphy's sweet sass made him the Elvis of comedy. Then he
became the Elvis of infamy. Now he's back in a smart new
romantic comedy -- if you'll have him.

By RICHARD CORLISS -- Reported by David E. Thigpen/New York


    Moviegoers adopt movie stars. They spot some fresh face in
the orphanage of anonymity, fall in love with him, take him home
and become parents to his fame. They are possessive too. When
he shines, they smile; when he acts up, they get angry. Or
worse, lose interest. If he gets a swelled head, or pays them no
heed, they may disown their golden child. There are so many,
after all, in the show-biz foundling home.

    Such is the problem facing Eddie Murphy, 31, as he awaits
this week's release of Boomerang, his first film in two years.
From the moment in 1980 when he burst onto Saturday Night Live,
Murphy had the audience's eye. More, he had their affection;
not just his talent but his boyish good nature won him that.
And because comic charisma radiated through the characters he
played on SNL, Murphy was able to jump from TV-sketch artist to
big-screen draw. He took two roles Richard Pryor had rejected,
in 48 HRS. and Trading Places, and overtook Pryor as the top
black film star. He stepped into a Sylvester Stallone part, in
Beverly Hills Cop, and strutted to the top of the world. Cop II
was even bigger. Raw, a concert film, and Coming to America
cemented his grand rep. He had a hit pop single and sold-out
tours. Fast Eddie had become Vast Eddie -- and then, as sure as
excess follows success, Half-Vast.

    The decline was subtle: not the incendiary self-destruction
of a Pryor -- no drug overdose for Eddie, not even a sex
scandal -- just the makings of the sour dissolution of the elder
Elvis, a star Murphy much admired. He put on weight and acted
like a jerk. Cockiness shaded into arrogance. He seemed to
guest-star in his own films (Harlem Nights, Another 48 HRS.),
touring them with the grudging ennui of a celebrity at a Kiwanis
gig somebody had booked for him. The star was now as remote as
Alpha Centauri. A squadron of bodyguards kept him cocooned in
satiety, assuring that no fan would rush up to ask, "Weren't you
Eddie Murphy?"

    There was another crucial factor. As a black star, Murphy
was pigeonholed by the industry. "When it comes to black
actors," says Reginald Hudlin, the (black) director of
Boomerang, "many screenwriters find it difficult to get beyond
race." Then, too, the zeitgeist was changing. For all his
street sass and gutter gargle, Murphy is basically a
middle-class star, closer to Bill Cosby than to the new wave of
African-American filmmakers (Spike Lee, John Singleton) and
rapmasters (all those hot Ices). Their marketable anger made
Eddie look timid, irrelevant, a hipper but still compromised
version of the old Negro clown -- a white man's black.

    Two things to remember. One: Murphy may have wrangled with
his employers at Paramount Pictures, feeling they undervalued
him and failed to scour the town for the most suitable projects,
but people never stopped going to his films. Harlem Nights
earned a respectable $60 million at the North American box
office; Another 48 HRS., $80 million. Two: he hasn't lost his
potential. "There are only a few others -- Robin Williams, Billy
Crystal, Steve Martin -- in Eddie's league as a brilliant comic
talent," says Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Disney sachem who worked
with the young Eddie at Paramount and is shepherding Murphy's
next film, Distinguished Gentlemen, at Disney. "Just as
important, he's realigned his management team and has a great
relationship with Brandon Tartikoff at Paramount. He's an
ambitious, nailed-down, determined actor who has a big agenda of
things he wants to get done."

    First on the list is Boomerang, a bright comedy about a
wealthy ad executive -- his Manhattan apartment isn't a duplex,
it's a googolplex -- who discovers what it's like to be on the
used end of a romance. Murphy, Hudlin (House Party) and
scenarists Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield (who wrote many
of Murphy's SNL bits, plus Coming to America) were inspired by
Annie Hall (which Murphy has seen five times) and by the
screwball love stories of '30s Hollywood. So the movie offers an
Eddie role reversal: the famous ladies' man is a demure love
slave to Robin Givens' sexually dominating boss. Like a smitten
girl, he sits by the phone, head to it, waiting for it to ring.
He's miffed when she's late for a date. After sex, he says,
"You make me feel dirty" and "I'm calling my mother." It makes
for good comedy -- and clever career rehab.

    Boomerang also establishes Eddie as the charming center,
almost the host, of a cast of genial zanies. They get most of
the laughs. The criminally adorable Halle Berry provides the
movie's heart. And Murphy is the stage manager, smiling his
approval. In one pretty scene a lively child named Khandra
Mkhize gives a little speech, with wide eyes and beautifully
broad gestures, and Eddie mimics her, gesture for gesture,
charm for charm. This is what he has always been: not just the
performer but the audience too. He's us, with a little comic
genius on the side.

    And he is still black, but not too black; Sheffield calls
this upscale homeboy movie Boyz in the Boardroom. Murphy says
he's not a political creature, but these days everything is
political. To stand in the middle of the mainstream, without
being washed away by more violent social currents, is a bold
stand in itself. So Eddie wants to please everyone. He's done it
before. And on the evidence of this ingratiating comic fantasy,
he's boomeranging back.