La famille Foldingue

I could probably count on one hand how many movie sequels are anything other than a complete waste of everybody's time. The Nutty Professor II is no exception, and I would go as far as to say that the 2 minutes of outtakes are probably funnier than the rest of the film combined.

The original was a definite success and featured one of Eddie Murphy's career-best performances. Unfortunately, the follow-up is little more than a lazy cash-grab that sucks the life out of the previously hilarious Klumps with a barrage of crass toilet humour. The storyline is absolutely atrocious and it culminates in a completely nonsensical ending. Murphy does just enough to make this film watchable but even he can't make up for such a bad script.

If you enjoyed the first movie, you'd be better off re-watching it than putting yourself through this. Really lame stuff and a massive insult to its excellent predecessor.

This picture is a crass and obnoxious misfire from Murphy, primarily due to it's unbelievably undeserved PG-13 rating. Laced with profanity, sexual innuendo and bathroom humor, you have to wonder if anyone from the ratings board was awake when this film was screened. If they think this type of fare is appropriate for young teenagers, they must live on another planet. Of course, if it had been rated "R", perhaps my opinion would be different: Murphy is often at his funniest when he's profane & irreverant, but that's for my adult sensibilities, not for those of pre-pubescent or (just barely) post-pubescent sensibilities. Murphy should know better (and has shown better judgement with the "Dr. DoLittle" pics) than to pander this kind of junk to kids.

All that notwithstanding, Murphy again essays multiple roles (under tons of Makeup) as nearly every member of the Klump family. Murphy has already worn more makeup than Boris Karloff ever did in his whole lifetime, so he must enjoy it. Tech credits are good as Murphy appears with Murphy, Murphy and Murphy in umpteen scenes, proving that split screen has been adequately exceeded with digital replacement.

Half-witted plot has professor Klump developing a youth serum, while dealing with the personal inner demons of his "Buddy Love" personna (see first movie for more details). Klump, constantly embarrased by subliminal impulses from his "Buddy" personna, isolates & extracts the Buddy Love DNA, which later spills onto the laboratory pet dog, resulting in an incomprehensible reincarnation of Buddy in human form (but with latent doggy traits). Buddy is intent on stealing the youth formula. and a race ensues to see who can complete the deal, with several dilemmas thrown in along the way. Looks like the sreenwriters swiped a few ideas from early Star Trek episodes (see "The Enemy Within").

Never mind what happens next. Change the channel. And definitely avoid the "Uncensored Director's Cut"; it just makes a bad movie worse.

Title: Nutty Professor II, The: The Klumps

Rating: **1/2 (out of 4)

Review: I've never been a die-hard Eddie Murphy fan, but that's of course not to say that he isn't funny or endearing, either. TRADING PLACES has always been my favorite Murphy movie, with the original BEVERLY HILLS COP a close second. He's a funny guy, and he has come further than he ever has had before with NUTTY II. The original 1996 film was both funny and enjoyable, if having the distinction of having occasional unnecessary bathroom humor. NUTTY II, however, is taken to extremes with the bathroom humor, everywhere from Grandma Klump giving Buddy Love oral sex in a hot tub to a hamster growing to epic proportions giving anal sex to Klump's boss, this film revels in bad taste way too much. Is the film funny? Sure it is, and it would have been a lot funnier if not for all the sickenening humor that we've seen dozens of times before (I don't blame Murphy particularly for this, considering the script was co-written by the guys who wrote AMERICAN PIE, and directed by Peter Segal, who has had his fair share of films with the same type of humor). They don't make the sick humor at least clever, which is the problem. THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and BASEKETBALL made their bathroom humor clever, but NUTTY II doesn't.

Murphy fans are sure to love this, though, because I was telling the truth before about him coming further than he ever has before. Playing no less than 8 roles (this might be some kind of record), his main character is Sherman Klump, a charmingly overweight professor who, in the original wanted to get rid of all the weight and became a stud in Buddy Love to make a beautiful co-ed (Jada Pinkett, whose missing prescence in the sequel is annoyingly unexplained) and eventually learns in the end that you should be yourself and that personality is way more important about looks. In the sequel, he can't shake off the DNA that Buddy has left inside of him, so he decides to attempt to get rid of it, but Buddy eventually (and predictably) regenerates himself with a new thing on his mind. Sherman, apparantly, has discovered the fountain of youth, and now Buddy is going to stop him and take the invention to his own credit. This film, apart from the original, focuses more on Sherman's family, right down to their gluttonous eating habits to their sexual fantasies. That's basically the whole plot in a nutshell. As I've said before, Murphy is terrific, and he's well worth watching in his eight roles, but this film will turn off a lot of viewers because all the sick humor, which I must say is more silly than funny, yet you find yourself for some reason still laughing to it (or rather, at it). Janet Jackson, as Eddie's love interest here, is OK, but she seems to be more important to the audience (any audience, not just the African-American audience) as a male fantasy figure than an actress. Overall, I'm looking at this film as another one to add to Murphy's list of commercial successes that is funny enough to make him a respectable comedian, but for once I want him to go more towards not grossing us out and finding a concept to appeal to anyone and everyone.

This cannot measure up to the first film - the first with Eddie Murphy, that is, not the Jerry Lewis film from 1963. (Actually, this doesn't measure up to the Lewis film, either.)

For me, the biggest disappointment was the "family" scenes in which Murphy plays almost all the roles including old ladies. In the first film, some of that was absolutely hilarious, the highlight of the movie. Here, that isn't the case. Also, some of the dialog is almost impossible to decipher. It's also too raunchy and this film should have been rated "R." A PG-13 rating is ridiculous with all the emphasis on sex. I hate to see kids watch movies like this.

Still, this had a decent share of funny moments. Also, to its credit, it is not as mean-spirited as the first film turned out to be. Still, the bad outweighs the good. It needed to be funnier, and less raunchy.

This was not a funny movie. Eddie Murphy who has starred in movies such as "Coming To America" and "Beverly Hills Cop" which were both hilarious, has struck out here in the poorest fashion possible.

"The Nutty Professor" (1996) was okay because of the use of the Klump family who appeared throughout the movie every so often breaking it up with some humorous scenes. In "The Klumps", the family were over used and relied on for all the laughs, but instead just became sickening and in turn extremely boring. I understand using the Klump family was the idea for the sequel, it's just that it doesn't come close to working.