Original ideas are shunned like lepers in today’s Hollywood, so what were the chances Eddie Murphy would last the decade without climbing into another fat suit? The only thing novel about the comedian’s latest multirole orgy of lowbrow physical comedy, “Norbit,” is that it jiggles into theaters concurrent with Murphy’s Oscar nomination for “Dreamgirls.” It’s the movie-biz equivalent of a pre-election scandal.
Make no mistake, “Norbit” is a horrendous movie. Crude, overlong and mean-spirited, it plays out like an unfunny, ill-conceived attempt to evoke Steve Martin’s politically incorrect buffoonery in “The Jerk.” In fact, Murphy and director Brian Robbins conjure something closer to “Pluto Nash.”
Meet Norbit (Murphy), a socially awkward loser raised – yep – as a poor black child. Not by sharecroppers, but by a happily racist Asian named Mr. Wong (Murphy again) in a dual-use Chinese restaurant/orphanage.
“You ugry, brack baby!” Mr. Wong marvels in garbled English upon finding infant Norbit on his doorstep.
Fast-forward 30 years. Norbit is married to Rasputia (Murphy, in promised blubber suit), a hideous, plus-size Svengali of a woman who sank her meat hooks into Norbit when he was a wimpy grade-schooler and never let go. Norbit is devoted to Rasputia but repulsed by her sexually. Their lovemaking has all the tenderness of a WWE SmackDown – funny costumes and busted furniture.
By and by, Norbit is shocked and outraged to find Rasputia in bed with a local fitness guru (Marlon Wayans). The wife’s infidelity is a blessing, of course, since it allows Norbit to guiltlessly pursue Kate (Thandie Newton), a long-lost childhood sweetheart who has returned to town to buy the orphanage. All that stands in her way are Rasputia’s hulking, protection-money-extorting brothers (Terry Crews, Clifton Powell, Mighty Rasta) and a scheming fiancé (Cuba Gooding Jr.).
Along the way, director Robbins and screenwriters Jay Scherick and David Rohm trade on all the usual mainstays of tasteless humor: racism, sexism, sizeism, ageism, animal abuse, Brazilian waxings, child endangerment … but none of it the good kind, if you know what I mean. The only indisputably funny scene is the one in which Norbit and Rasputia visit a water-slide park.
“Are you sure you’re wearing bottoms with those, ma’am?” the attendant asks, painfully eying Rasputia’s blubber-apron.
With her monstrous carriage and sure-to-be-repeated-around-water-coolers-come-Monday-catchphrase (“How you doin’?”), Rasputia makes for a fine spectacle of cartoon gluttony, but little else in “Norbit” pulls its weight. How we doin,’ honestly? Not so hot.
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