Tag Archives: eddie murphy

Jan 30 2023
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Movies

Movie Review – You People (2023)

Meh, it’s ok.

But honestly, when I first heard about it, I wanted to love it, given the cast of famously funny people, but I’ll give it a solid C. Not a total waste of time but not something I’d rush to watch again either.

Let’s get to the review.

In a modern re-telling of Sidney Poitier’s classic film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Jonah Hill plays Ezra, a stockbroker who hates his job and yearns to podcast full time with his buddy Mo (Sam Jay.) An Uber mishap brings him together with Amira (Lauren London) and the duo fall in love.

Six months later, the kids are ready to get married but alas, they have to navigate the waters filled with their wacky in-laws. Sounds like a typical rom-com in which the protagonist couple is getting married.

Eh, but then the waters get choppy. Julia Louis Dreyfus, she of Elaine on Seinfeld fame, plays Ezra’s mother as a walking, talking, living parody of liberal white guilt, constantly showing off her perspective African American daughter in law to friends and family as though she has won a “See?! My Black Daughter in Law is Total Proof that I’m Not Racist!” trophy. Ezra’s Dad, played by David Duchovny, he of X-Files fame, attempts politeness only to drone on and on in his first meeting with Amara about what a fan he has always been of the rapper Xzibit, culminating in him cluelessly asking if she has ever met him.

Meanwhile, Amara’s parents, Akbar and Fatima (Eddie Murphy and Nia Long) are devout Muslims and no fans of Ezra. They are, however, huge fans of Louis Farrakhan, culminating in a clash with Julia over Farrakhan’s controversial remarks about the Jewish people. I think this scene was intended to be funny but it is a bit cringe, IMO. Akbar later invites Ezra on a series of escapades designed to trip him up and prove his lack of worth as a future husband and son-in-law.

The shenanigans culminate in the happy couple splitting up, deciding that their cultural differences are too great to get around. Somehow, it’s up to Julia and Eddie to come together and find a wake to fix what they broke with their parental meddling and make their kids happy again.

On one hand, there are some good messages. The first is a tale as old as time in many a flick, namely, that at some point in your adult life, if you’re ever going to become an adult yourself, you have to tell your meddling parents to stick a cork in it and back off. This could have been a chance for the film to show how despite our cultural differences, parents trying to run their kids’ lives well into the kids’ adulthood often occurs. Parents of all different backgrounds love their kids, think they know what the right path is for their kids, but don’t always understand what their kids are going through, what their kids want, that sometimes they just need to chill out and if they are right and the kid is indeed making a mistake, then the kid needs to fall flat on their face and pick him/herself up and learn the lesson on their own. Then again, maybe what they are doing is the right move for them even if it isn’t what makes the parent happy.

On the other hand, the film takes the Netflixian hype woke approach of demanding that everyone be constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY aware of racial differences at every turn. And look, I’m not saying that such awareness is a bad thing. It’s a good thing but holy smokes, I spent the whole film waiting for the part where the Ezra’s and Amari’s fams figure out that they’re more alike than they are different, that they all just want the best for their kids, that the more time they spend together, the more they’ll start to trust and respect one another.

Maybe I just didn’t get it but the film almost comes across as arguing that interracial marriage sets up such a difficult minefield – that the black half of the couple must keep their head on a swivel, constantly on the lookout for oppression from their white love interest, and said white half of the couple must constantly walk on eggshells, as any comment, any mistake, any foot in mouth moment will be taken as a horrendous offense, as if black people aren’t able to tell the difference between true racism and someone who said something boneheaded but they still love them.

In other words, it almost comes across as saying that interracial marriages are too much work, too filled with hostility, destined to fail because neither side could ever possibly understand the other. Honestly, I can’t say I understand that because I’ve never been in a racial marriage but of all the interracial couples I know, I don’t get the impression that they spend all day tip toing around with their words, making sure the other understands that their words and actions should not be misconstrued as racial offenses. They just seem to love, respect and get each other, as all healthy, happy couples do.

SIDENOTE: Eddie Murphy, one of the GOATS of comedy, in a role where he barely cracks a smile and is given nary a funny line. Julia Louis Dreyfus, one of the greatest sitcom funny ladies of the 1990s also in an unfunny role. Jonah Hill, one of the funnier actors in modern times…so many funny people in a movie that’s about as funny as watching paint dry.

STATUS: Borderline shelf-worthy. To be fair, there are a few good one liners. Ironically, David Duchovny, the one actor in the cast known for having a dramatic, not funny resume, rattles off some of the flick’s best hits, at one point schooling Amari’s parents about how his wife is so not racist that she hated “Gone with the Wind” long before white people became aware that they were supposed to.

It had the potential to be good but all in all, I don’t get the idea of a streaming service that casts practically every couple in their movies and TV shows as interracial making a movie that paints interracial marriage as an arduous chore such that both parties must spend every waking moment worrying about how their actions might be misinterpreted by the other, how they might accidentally offend the other, how it’s all too difficult to bother with…eh…I just…it had the potential to be moving and funny but I have to agree with the majority of critics who call this flick too heavy handed. It took a jump but just didn’t quite land the dismount.

Still worth a watch but not something I’d watch again and again. We live in America folks. Love is love and life is short and in a country where people of so many different races, religions, ethnicities, backgrounds all live so close to one another, interracial, inter-religious, inter-this or that marriage happens all the time. It’s not a bad thing and it shouldn’t be seen as an arduous chore.

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Sep 17 2017
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Movies, Uncategorized

BQB’s Classic Movie Reviews – 48 Hours (1982)

Guns!  Violence!  Cringeworthy racial slurs!

BQB here with a review of “48 Hours.”

When I was growing up, this movie was a cable TV staple.  Seemed like every so often it was on the TV in the background.  After watching it as an adult, I have different thoughts about it than I did as a kid.

Come to think about it, I’m not sure why Aunt Gertie even let me watch this movie.  Every two seconds someone is either getting shot or there’s a pair of titties jiggling around.  Guns and titties.  Guns and titties.  The first?  Not so much fun.  The second?  Lots of fun.

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But I digress.  Nick Nolte plays the gruff and grizzled drunk San Francisco detective Jack Cates.  Hooked on booze and permanently pissed off, he’s a walking stereotype of a broken down cop.

Two criminals on the run, Ganz and Billy Bear (James Remar and Sonny Landham) have murdered Detective Algren (Jonathan Banks.)  If some of these names sound familiar, it’s because Remar would later go on to play the ghost of Dexter’s father Harry on Showtime’s “Dexter” while Banks would go on to play the great role of his career as cop turned fixer Mike Ehrmantrout on “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.”

With nothing to go on, Nolte springs fast talking convict Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) from prison, arranging to take the crook onto the streets for 48 hours.  The premise is a little thin though as we learn, Hammond once ran with these bad hombres only to be cheated out of money and turned into the police by them, so he has motivation to want to help Nolte take these bad dudes down.

Cates appears miserable throughout the film.  Reggie appears generally happy and easygoing.  Cates is series.  Reggie jokes.  Together, they are a regular odd couple, hating each other in the beginning, becoming fast friends by the end.

The film has cringeworthy parts when they are witnessed through modern eyes.  Throughout the film, Cates calls Reggie terrible, racially divisive names like “watermelon” and “spearchucker” and “boy.”

At first, I thought these words seemed rough even for a 1980s picture.  I mean, the 1980s were no picnic for race relations but I do recall the general idea of racial harmony and people should get along despite racial differences was in existence.

But then again, with each racial slur, Reggie gives Jack his comeuppance.  At one point, Jack comes right out and calls Reggie an n-word and in my mind I’m thinking, “Ungh this is too much” and then bam, Reggie responds by punching Jack in the face.  Later, Reggie even has the opportunity to break up a bar full of racist rednecks.

Thus, the racial language is hard to hear but there was sort of a method to the madness.  Perhaps the message wasn’t to say this language is good but to show that people who use these words will suffer for it – i.e., call a black guy an n-word, don’t be surprised if you get a deserved punch in the face.

By the end of the film, Cates and Hammond have become fast friends.  Over a drink, Cates tells Hammond he’s sorry for calling him all of these nasty names and adds that he didn’t mean them, that he just said them because he’s a cop and it was his job to “keep Reggie down” i.e. make sure he knew that he was the boss and Reggie was the convict under his supervision.

Reggie accepts the apology but points out, “that wasn’t all part of your job.”  In other words, Reggie is saying he’s willing to make amends but is pointing out that Cates has some racial biases inside of him that he needs to work on and rid himself of to become a better person.  Cates nods in agreement as if to say he realizes – that “it was the job” was an excuse for him not coming to terms that he’s a racist prick.

So honestly, I was torn by it.  To modern ears, these racial slurs are tough to hear.  And from a modern standpoint, these words aren’t used as willy nilly as they used to be (though still more than they should be).

On the other hand, they’re used to show that Cates is a racist prick and that a friendship with a black man causes him to rethink his racist ways.

Sometimes you have to give a movie a chance.  At first, I thought these slurs were just being tossed out frivolously but by the end I realized the movie had a point about holding people to account for their racism.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.

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Apr 13 2017
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TV

RIP Charlie Murphy

Sad news in the comedy world, 3.5 readers, as comedian Charlie Murphy has died at age 57 from leukemia.

Charlie was the right hand man of his brother, Eddie, working as a writer on many of his films.  He became a breakout success in his own right as an actor on Chapelle’s Show.  His sketches in which he recounted meeting Rick James and Prince were especially popular.

57 is way too young.  Makes me sad, 3.5 readers.  Makes me sad.

Watch Charlie meet Rick James here.

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Feb 24 2017
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Movies

BQB’s Classic Movie Roundup – Coming to America (1988)

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Holy shit I’m so old.  I actually saw this movie as a little kid in the theater, 3.5 readers.

And now that I think of it, I probably should not have heard the phrase, “the royal penis is clean, your highness” as a kid, but oh well, I turned out fine.  I run a successful blog with 3.5 readers, after all.

If you haven’t seen this yet, you have to.  I was running through the channels tonight and it came on and I was glued.  It’s got to be Eddie Murphy’s most memorable movie and even though it’s a comedy, I think the late 1980s Academy was in remiss for not giving it some Oscar love because it is as funny as it is touching.

Eddie Murphy plays Akeem, Prince of the fictional African nation, Zamunda.  His father, King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones) has arranged a marriage between Akeem and a fine ass babe that will do anything that Akeem wants, but Akeem is, you know, a deep thinker.  He wants a woman who will love him for his mind, not his money and better yet, a woman who he will actually be able to connect with and talk to, an intellectual type.

So, Akeem and his trusty manservant, Semmi (Arsenio Hall) shuffle off to Queens, New York, where those pose as a pair of fast food joint workers.  Akeem falls for the owner’s daughter, Lisa (Shari Headley), but he must juggle his dopey poor man act while fending off Lisa’s douchey rich boyfriend/Jheri curl empire heir (a young Eriq La Salle before he became a doctor on ER), dealing with Lisa’s disapproving father (John Amos) and taking down a stick-up man (a young Samuel L. Jackson, long before he got tired of these mother effing snakes on this mother effing plane).

I spent so much of my youth quoting lines from this movie.  Check it out, 3.5.  You won’t be sorry.

 

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Mar 20 2016
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Movies

Movie Discussion – Trading Places (1983)

 

It was on TV this afternoon and I ended up watching it.  Dan Akroyd.  Eddie Murphy.  Jamie Lee Curtis as a hooker with a heart of gold.

It was on all the time when I was a kid so it took me on a stroll down memory lane.

If you’ve never seen it, it asks the “nature vs. nurture” question that plagues us today.  Do people possess an innate ability to thrive or fail or is it possible to pluck anyone out of a bad environment, put them in a good one and see them succeed?

To that end, the Duke Brothers, a pair of elderly Wall Street tycoons frame their firm’s manager Winthorp (Dan Akroyd) to see if he thrives or fails when he hits the skids.  Meanwhile, they appoint Billy Ray (Eddie Murphy) as the firm’s manager and give him a lot of money to see whether he thrives or fails when thrust into success.

Also, there are a lot of boobs.  Many gratuitous 1980s boobs belonging to women who are either dead or very old now.  Depressing.

Questions for my 3.5 readers

QUESTION 1:

Do you think environment matters when it comes to a person’s success or failure?  Are people in tough situations bound to fail or are there people who can make the best out of any situation?

QUESTION 2:

Why aren’t there any boobs in movies anymore?  Movies used to have boobs all the time.  Now I barely see any.  What gives?

Meanwhile, movies are more violent than ever with people getting shot, hacked up, eaten by CGI movies but put one pair of boobs on the screen and to quote the Joker, “everyone loses their minds!”

NOTE: Downside – there is a blackface scene in which Dan Akroyd goes undercover as a Jamaican while wearing blackface and fake dreads.  Even by 1983 standards that was a little bit off.  So there’s that but overall despite that one scene, the movie does have a good message about not automatically disparaging someone who doesn’t come from a perfect background, that had you lacked opportunity you might struggle too.

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