Eddie Murphy's Toilet-Humored Family Business

 NUTTY PROFESSOR II: THE KLUMPS (2000)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Original Review from December 19th, 2001

What has happened to Eddie Murphy? Here is a man who prided himself on raw humor with an intent to poke and nudge his head at everyone, from women to homosexuals to Michael Jackson to his own family. It is a probably a sign of the times that

his act is now considered politically incorrect. Murphy has now become the improbable star of family comedies, possibly because he is married and has children. "Bowfinger" at least seemed to point in a new direction but "Nutty Professor II" is as lowbrow and as keen on flatulence as one might expect.
Whereas the first film focused on the obese Sherman Klump and his paranoia about his sexually potent alter ego, this sequel offers nothing but flatulence. If all five writers can pass for comedy nowadays are flatulent jokes and anal rape by a hamster then I must be behind the times.

This time, Sherman Klump (Eddie Murphy) is about to marry a sweet, always smiling professor,
Denise (Janet Jackson), who loves the man for his intelligence and warmth. Lately, though, Sherman has been seeing and feeling his alter ego, Buddy Love (also played by Murphy), inside him. Buddy Love is ready to burst out of Sherman to such an extent that poor old Sherman says the most unflattering, sexually provocative statements to his Denise instead of proposing to her. To put an end
to Buddy Love, Sherman works on eliminating the DNA sequence that contains Buddy. Buddy is eliminated but it causes Sherman to become dumb and dumber by the minute. But what will he tell his bride-to-be? And how will he win a grant for 150 million dollars for his newfound youth formula if he can't even explain the science behind it? And what's with Buddy Love regenerating from a pool of
liquid and a single strand of dog hair? The latter joke was funnier in "Hot Shots! Part Deux."

The selling point of this movie is the Klumps, Sherman's flatulent family who delight in gorging food at "all you can eat" restaurants. There is Grandma Klump, Klump's mother and father, his surly brother, his overweight nephew, and all they do is eat and talk about sex and impotence. That is it. No attempt is
made to make these people more than stereotypes and part of the charm of the original "Nutty Professor" was how little we saw of them (the famous flatulent dinner scene was as over-the-top as a family comedy can get). But the movie goes overboard giving these characters so much screen time and so little to do except make sexual references galore. A little of Grandma Klump goes a long way
(including an astoundingly awful jacuzzi scene), as do the trite bedroom shenanigans between Mama and Papa Klump. True, they are all played brilliantly by Eddie Murphy and the special-effects of having them all together in certain shots is seamless. But the humor is about as far down the toilet drain as one
can imagine and not particularly funny either.

The biggest laughs I had, as correctly indicated by Internet Movie Critic James Berardinelli, are the brief outtakes that follow the movie. I also enjoyed Buddy Love's antics in the bathroom, which I will not go into detail explaining. That is approximately less than five minutes of laughs in a 1 hour and forty minute movie. Need I say more? There, I just saved you one hour and forty minutes.