The Nutty Professor (1996)
Directed by Tom Shadyac
When beautiful Carla Purty joins the university faculty, genetic professor Dr. Sherman Klump grows desperate to whittle his 400-pound frame down to size and win her heart. So, with one swig of his experimental fat-reducing serum, Sherman becomes 'Buddy Love', a fast-talking, pumped-up, plumped down Don Juan.
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What critics compared The Nutty Professor to
From its brilliant opening sequence—three bogus “pre-title” trailers establishing the characters and careers of action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller, channeling Stallone), comedian Jeff “Fats” Portnoy (Jack Black, mocking multi-character Eddie Murphy fart-fests like The Nutty Professor ) and multi-Oscar-winning Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr., taking down Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson on his way toward Iron Eagle -era Louis Gosset Jr.), Tropic Thunder marks a clear and welcome return to the sketch-comedy priorities of Stiller’s influential television work.
Black plays Jeff Portnoy, a comedy superstar whose films are a thinly-veiled attack on Eddie Murphy's feature-length fart-gags The Nutty Professor and Norbit.
Joining Speedman is Aussie character actor Kirk Lazurus (Robert Downey Jr.), who undergoes a pigment operation to darken his skin for his role, and Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), a comedy actor who made a name for himself in The Fatties – think Eddie Murphy and his many roles in The Nutty Professor and throw in some added farts.
…la Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor."
I’ve been watching body-positive comedies since the 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor, and I have to say that this one doesn’t do anything particularly new.
In a weird amalgam of two other Eddie Murphy comedies The Nutty Professor and Dr. Dolittle the zookeeper takes the creatures' counsel and transforms himself into an alpha-male boor, a character James doesn't have the meanness to inhabit.
If you were annoyed by Eddie Murphy’s prosthetic-laden racial stereotypes in films like “The Nutty Professor” and “Norbit,” I can’t imagine why you’d give this nonsense a pass.
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The charcoal-black Spider-Man is pretty cool-looking, and the black-clad Peter (with a lock over his forehead) brings off some snazzy moves in a jazz club when he tries to make Mary Jane jealous with his blonde arm candy (Bryce Dallas Howard)?he’s like Jerry Lewis’s Buddy Love in The Nutty Professor.
And in ''The Nutty Professor,'' Eddie Murphy had a mimic's feast playing the gentleman blimp Sherman Klump and his cantankerous chorus of relatives.
Borrowing heavily from The Nutty Professor and Mrs. Doubtfire (not to mention, of course, the grand "mama" of them all, Tootsie), this film serves up heapin' helpin's of fat jokes, sex jokes, and scatological humor, wrapped around a thin plot involving FBI agents trying to nab a bank robber.
Somehow Webb and the writers (including Star Trek duo Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci) shoehorn in a breathless backstory about Peter Parker's parents; some melancholy star-crossed business between Peter (Andrew Garfield) and his boffinish beloved Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone); the woebegone family life of tormented rich boy Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan, palely loitering); and a story about a lonely techie (Jamie Foxx, in comedy hair and teeth, playing it like Jerry Lewis's "before" persona in The Nutty Professor ) who falls into a vat of eels and becomes the blue-skinned, translucent, galvanically overstimulated supervillain Electro.
It's one of those great comedy performances (think Steve Martin in "Roxanne" or Eddie Murphy in "The Nutty Professor") that you hope people remember come awards time.
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The zany parody of '70s Hong Kong martial arts movies is the brainchild of actor/writer/director/all-around silly guy Steve Oedekerk, writer of such films as “Patch Adams,” the Eddie Murphy remake of “The Nutty Professor” and “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls,” which he directed.
Oedekerk — best known as the writer of the sequels to The Nutty Professor and Ace Ventura — works overtime on this ugly baby, serving as writer, director, producer and star.
Only Oedekerk (he also wrote "Patch Adams" and "The Nutty Professor") expands the level of appropriation: re-creating the film's sets at a Mexican location, body-doubling the Hong Kong actors from the original film and adding new characters, scenes and visual effects.
Unfortunately, writer/director Steve Oedekerk - the writer of "The Nutty Professor" and "Patch Adams" and director of "Ace Ventura: When Nature calls" - either didn't see that film or learn its lesson of brevity as he's delivered a full-length version of what's essentially the same gag in "Kung Pow! Enter the Fist."
The film, written and directed by Steve Oedekerk (who also wrote "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius," "The Nutty Professor" and "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls") uses footage from a 1977 martial arts film called "Savage Killers" (AKA "Tiger & Crane Fist") starring Hong Kong action star Yu Wang.
When a performer finally synergizes with a role, it can be real movie magic (think John Travolta in Pulp Fiction or Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor).