Saturday Night Live: The Best of Eddie Murphy

This compilation of skits from Saturday Night Live covers the 4 years that Eddie Murphy appeared on the TV show before he left to make movies, and begins with an intro where he returned thinking he was lucky to get the gig after the failure of Best Defense. Ironically, Beverly Hills Cop came out just before his return, so he was back to being an "actor".

These skits reveal Murphy's talent for impersonation, his victims here including James Brown, Stevie Wonder (who appears to do his own self-parody), Little Richard and Richard Simmons, Jesse Jackson, and Desmond Tutu. His James Brown is the most successful, perhaps because Murphy possesses a good singing voice as well, however some of the impressions smack of the use of him because he happens to be black. Tellingly, Murphy's persona is that of the hostile jive-talking negro, which pales in comparison to the genuine eccentric touches Lily Tomlin brings to her performance with him in the Old Colored Man skit.

The Little Richard Simmons and Dion Dion skits show Murphy in his much criticised gay-bashing mode. When he is disguised as a white man to infiltrate the supposed underground behavior he is otherwise excluded from, he looks more latino than white, which undermines the joke. It's not much of a joke anyway, since it inforces the reverse racism of "stupid white men" who fear the black revolution.

Although most of these skits are unfunny, two almost redeem the collection. Pros and Cons presents the new literary phenomena of prison writers, and is shot in a documentary style, with all of the production credited to Norman Mailer. And the Nightline Buckwheat Has Been Shot extended skit manages to parody the footage of the shootings of Ronald Reagan, Lee Harvey Oswald, and TV news.

Apart from Tomlin, the collection also includes cameos from Ron Howard, Mr T, and Joe Piscopo doing a cute Frank Sinatra.

Now this is the real Saturday Night Live: funny, biting, mean, and hilarious. The show from a quarter century ago had a diamond in the rough and an equally funny companion, Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. These two single-handedly revived the franchise after the original cast left, and far outshone the originals in terms of raw talent. Eddie was a phenomenon of the comedy world that the now-pathetic SNL may never see again. He was only 19 when he joined, but he was highly versatile in his ability to do impressions, which was his best talent. Eddie knew how to work the audience, and gave the people precisely what they wanted. He was enthusiastic and energetic, and could do anything from James Brown to a curmudgeonly old Jewish man. He created a menagerie of very funny and highly memorable characters. His fast-talking Brooklyn stand-up style was a welcome change to the by-the-numbers comedy school comedians who made up the rest of the SNL cast in the early Eighties. Eddie was fresh and exciting, and far from pedestrian. No comedian on SNL, even among those of the so-called "great" originals, such as John Belushi or Bill Murray, rose from nothing to international fame and fortune as fast, or at such a young age, as Eddie Murphy. He was like a bright comet in the comedy heavens that is really an anomaly.

I highly doubt SNL can ever hope to hedge their bets on another boy wonder like Eddie. A talent like his is hard to find. Jean Douminian and Ebersole's decision to cast Eddie was pure good luck, and I doubt Lorne Michaels will ever come across such a serendipitous find for the rest of his career.

I'm a fan of Eddie Murphy's work on both "SNL" and in movies (up until the late '80s, anyway). I expected a lot from this "best of" collection but it's simply not very good. There are a few good gags - the "white man disguise," James Brown's hottub, The Little Rascals bit - but overall it has more misses than hits. I'm not sure why they thought putting the Gumby skit in here was a good idea.

I guess the biggest problem is that they were looking for "Eddie Murphy skits" whereas some of his better ones were those in which he interacted with others and shared the screen. Most of the ones included here are focused just on him, and to be honest a vast majority of them simply aren't very good.

Instead, I recommend "The Best of Will Ferrell," which is to date the best "best of" I've seen.

"Best of Eddie Murphy" needs a bit of work done.