{"id":145289,"date":"2025-11-21T12:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T12:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/145289\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T12:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T12:18:07","slug":"engaging-but-too-upbeat-to-get-the-full-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/145289\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaging, but Too Upbeat to Get the Full Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEddie Murphy<\/a>, as he has always been the first to acknowledge, is the rare comedian who set out to model himself on rock \u2018n\u2019 roll superstardom. He wanted to be Richard Pryor, but he also wanted to be Elvis. That\u2019s why, in his two legendary stand-up performances of the 1980s, the HBO special \u201cEddie Murphy Delirious\u201d and \u201cEddie Murphy Raw\u201d (the 1987 concert movie that\u2019s still the highest-grossing comedy concert film ever released), he strutted around in leather suits \u2014 a red one open to the waist in \u201cDelirious,\u201d a paisley blue one in \u201cRaw\u201d \u2014 that showcased him as the sexiest stand-up comedian the world had ever known.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cBeing Eddie<\/a>,\u201d the engaging if also relentlessly upbeat and manicured documentary portrait of Murphy that\u2019s now showing on Netflix, Jerry Seinfeld makes the point that comedians aren\u2019t really known for being good-looking. But in the \u201980s, Murphy, with his sleek swagger and bedroom eyes, was the comedian as rock-star pin-up, and that smolder of glamour was built into the effrontery of his act. He was like a Richard Pryor who wasn\u2019t sitting on a powder keg of anxiety. He was bold, insolent, cathartically hilarious. His other role model was Muhammad Ali, and the way Murphy explains it in \u201cBeing Eddie\u201d is that he, Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, and Michael Jordan were \u201cthe first generation of Black overachievers, the first fearless ones,\u201d adding, \u201cI think that\u2019s what we got from Ali.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPryor, Elvis, Ali: That\u2019s quite a legacy to build yourself on. And Murphy, for a few years there, was such a mighty god of comedy that he became the next figure in that line. In the Reagan era, he could do no wrong, which is why it didn\u2019t even matter that \u201cBeverly Hills Cop\u201d was, at heart, a serviceable, ramshackle vehicle that worked because Murphy all but hijacked the movie. His in-your-face, fastest-mouth-in-the-West presence was ahead of everyone, ahead of the whole culture. He talked and talked and talked, and audiences were electrified. Pryor had been a revolutionary talent (and let\u2019s be clear: he was a genius), but Murphy was revolutionary too. We hear eloquent testimonials from Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock about how Murphy, even more than Pryor, redefined the power of what a Black movie star could be.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first half of \u201cBeing Eddie\u201d is very satisfying, because in telling the story of Murphy\u2019s rise it invites us to revel in what a magical performer he was. Every detail is fascinating \u2014 the way he grew up in an all-Black neighborhood of Roosevelt, Long Island, fixated, from the age of 13, on the destiny of his future fame (\u201cThat was my mantra. And I really, really, really, really believed it with every fiber\u201d), not just idolizing Pryor but channeling him, becoming a stand-up comedian in his teens, then landing on \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d just out of high school, when he was only 19, in what turned out to be the most unlikely opportune moment.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe started there in 1980-81, the first season after the original cast members had left, and Lorne Michaels along with them. It was a new show, with Jean Douminian in charge, and audiences resented it; they wanted their Dan and Gilda and Bill and Laraine back. The new edition was something of a washout, but Murphy busted through the mediocrity because everything he did was so outrageous and alive that it was undeniable.<\/p>\n

\n\tI can still remember how you\u2019d wait for Murphy to show up, seeing what he would dare to do next: Mr. Robinson\u2019s Neighborhood, Gumby, Velvet Jones, his X-ray impersonations of Bill Cosby and Mr. T and Stevie Wonder, and the recurring sketch that cemented his rock-star status, James Brown\u2019s Celebrity Hot Tub, because apart from how funny it was it\u2019s as if he had become James Brown, in all his big-bad-dog charisma. In \u201cBeing Eddie,\u201d Jamie Foxx captures something about Murphy when he recalls \u201cseein\u2019 Eddie on \u2018SNL\u2019\u2026skinny. That\u2019s when comics are most lethal, when we\u2019re skinny. When we ain\u2019t had no food, we ain\u2019t even ate yet. He\u2019s just skinny and funny as fuck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMurphy built on that authority in his first movie, \u201c48 HRS.\u201d (1982), which came together because Jeffrey Katzenberg saw his talent and rolled out the carpet for him. Yet he was nearly fired during the first weeks of filming. By the standards of corrupt Hollywood thinking, Murphy was playing \u201cthe Black sidekick,\u201d but he never got that memo. Somehow, he took over the movie (from Nick Nolte at his most shaggy-gruff), and in the bar scene he did nothing less than rewrite the rules of what a Black actor could be. Brandishing a stiletto, he comes up to a white stooge and says, \u201cYou know what I am? I\u2019m your worst fuckin\u2019 nightmare, man. I\u2019m a n\u2014- with a badge. That mean I got the mission to kick your fuckin\u2019 ass whenever I feel like it.\u201d He says it like he means it. It\u2019s as if all the power of the rising energy of hip-hop was compressed into that one game-changing, American-paradigm-shifting speech. And\u2026he was funny as fuck.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Eddie Murphy we see in \u201cBeing Eddie\u201d views that whole period with a Zen detachment that\u2019s compelling. I\u2019m used to thinking of Murphy as compulsively private, to the point that he could get prickly with interviewers. But in \u201cBeing Eddie,\u201d seated alone in the living room of the beautiful mansion he built in Los Angeles, he speaks with an expansive ease, and a directness, that has a captivating surface candor. At 64, he\u2019s still lean and youthful, maybe one result of the fact that he shunned cocaine (as in the first time he went out on the town with John Belushi and Robin Williams, and they laid lines on the table, which he refused), never drank, and tended to sit quietly in the back of parties nursing a Coca-Cola. Was the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll spiritual-son-of-Richard Pryor comedy upstart actually shy? Some call him that. But maybe he was just sane.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet the documentary, directed by Angus Wall, treats him with kid gloves and, bottom line, refuses to go near his personal peccadilloes (though he confesses to having OCD as a kid, which he says he cured in himself when he learned it was a mental illness), or really to get into his personal life at all. We learn that he has 10 children, and that he got divorced, but there\u2019s no other mention of the woman he was married to for 23 years. The implication is that what Eddie Murphy became was a paterfamilias. And maybe he did. He speaks with reverence of how having children changes you.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the reason the movie feels a bit bubble-wrapped is that it goes through the paces of Murphy\u2019s career, ticking off almost every key moment as a creative triumph. And while there\u2019s no doubt that Murphy kept trying things, going with the flow of what he was offered, I still think there\u2019s a mystery at the heart of Eddie Murphy\u2019s career that the film doesn\u2019t touch, and that is this: Why did he draw back? Why did the Eddie Murphy who had positively ruled in the \u201980s end up taking a back seat to a Murphy who was a far more complacent talent?<\/p>\n

\n\tPart of it is that you can only by the young Elvis once. Murphy, as the critic Elvis Mitchell argues in the documentary, didn\u2019t just change comedy \u2014 he changed the world. And once you\u2019ve done that you likely can\u2019t exert that revolutionary magic again. But Murphy\u2019s description of why he never did stand-up after \u201cRaw\u201d feels lame. He says that when he would go to comedy clubs to try out bits, the unfinished routines would be reported on in the gossip columns, which he hated. Maybe that\u2019s true, but you want to go: So what? That didn\u2019t stop Pryor or Robin Williams or Seinfeld. Murphy could, and should, have continued to work in the awesome medium that is stand-up \u2014 not every year, but at least once or twice more, going back to giving us the Eddie Murphy vision of the state of the world. (He could still do it now.)<\/p>\n

\n\tEarly in the documentary, Murphy says he can\u2019t think of another actor who has done as many types of roles as he has. Normally, that observation would be made by someone who\u2019s not the subject of the film. But what it reveals is that Murphy thinks of himself as the ultimate chameleon, factoring in the multiple roles he has played under pounds of prosthetics in films like \u201cComing to America\u201d and \u201cThe Nutty Professor\u201d and \u201cNorbit.\u201d There\u2019s no question that a few of those roles are gems (the old Jewish man in \u201cComing to America,\u201d the whole family of Klumps). Evaluated not as comedy but simply as acting, those bite-size performances are rather amazing. (It\u2019s one of the reasons I\u2019d passionately hoped, 30 years ago, that Murphy would play Martin Luther King Jr. in a proposed Oliver Stone conspiracy biopic. He could have been brilliant.) And yes, he\u2019s terrific in \u201cDreamgirls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the simple truth is that Eddie Murphy\u2019s movies wound up losing their edge. He got his mojo back for \u201cThe Nutty Professor\u201d (which was 30 years ago), and also for \u201cShrek\u201d (five years later), but in the vast majority of films I\u2019ve seen him in since, I often get the feeling that I\u2019m watching an Eddie Murphy replicant \u2014 an actor doing an impersonation of his earlier state of being. In the \u201980s, when he wasn\u2019t faking it, a simple talk-show appearance of his (we\u2019re shown several of them) could be mesmerizing. I think what changed is that he became the cautious guardian of his brand.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaybe what was going on behind that fa\u00e7ade is that he\u2019d become a family man, and that\u2019s where he was putting his passion. But even as he sustained his comedy career, doing \u201cfamily movies\u201d like \u201cDr. Doolittle\u201d and \u201cDaddy Day Care,\u201d he ceased to be the blissful renegade he once was. \u201cBeing Eddie\u201d reminds us that Eddie Murphy, back when he was changing the world, was an explosive comedy artist. The movie tries to bring his career full circle by devoting too much time to his 2019 hosting of \u201cSaturday Night Live,\u201d as if that was an epochal event. And more than anything, Murphy seems happy now, a man who has transcended his demons. In \u201cBeing Eddie,\u201d you can get a contact high off his well-being, but you may wish that a few of those demons would come back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eddie Murphy, as he has always been the first to acknowledge, is the rare comedian who set out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[89033,55323,146,85,46,397],"class_list":{"0":"post-145289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-being-eddie","9":"tag-eddie-murphy","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}