![]() ![]() Responding to the pleas of his mother, Murphy enrolled at Nassau Community College after high school and worked part-time as a shoe store clerk. Murphy was voted the "most popular" boy in his graduating class. This early success ignited a passion for showbiz, and Murphy began working on his comedy routines after school and performing stand-up at local bars, clubs and "gong shows." His schoolwork suffered, however, and Murphy had to repeat the 10th grade as a result.īy doubling up on classes, and attending summer and night school, he graduated only a couple of months late. Hosting a talent show at the Roosevelt Youth Center at age 15, Murphy delighted his young audience with an impersonation of Al Green. "My mother says I never talked in my own voice," Murphy later said.Īlthough he was never a dedicated student, Murphy found a great forum for his verbal agility in grade school, excelling in the popular game of "ranking" - trading witty insults with classmates. Murphy watched a lot of television growing up and developed a great skill for impressions, doing such characters as Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle and Sylvester the Cat. When Murphy was nine years old, his mother married Vernon Lynch, a foreman at a Breyer's ice cream factory, and the family moved to the primarily African American suburb of Roosevelt, Long Island. His parents divorced when he was three five years later, his father died and his mother went into the hospital for an extended period. He spent his early years in the projects of Bushwick with his father, Charles, a New York City police officer and amateur comedian, his mother, Lillian, a telephone operator, and his brother Charles. He continues to star in many movies, including comedies, dramas and family films.Įddie Regan Murphy was born on April 3, 1961, in Brooklyn, New York. At age 21, Murphy co-starred with Nick Nolte in 48 Hours, and he went on to further box-office success with Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America, The Nutty Professor and Shrek. But the film is a squirmy miscalculation of tone.Eddie Murphy began doing stand-up comedy as a teenager and later joined the cast of Saturday Night Live. More of that and less of peeing on poisonous jellyfish might have helped. The way Eddie is vilified in the speeches after the wedding of a former girlfriend. The suspicions that Miranda's cousin ( Danny McBride) has about Eddie. Lila's showdown between a deviated septum and a shrimp. The hair on the head of the first child of Eddie's best pal ( Rob Corddry), for example. The Farrellys' overkill breaks the fabric of their story. But what's so great about Eddie's father ( Jerry Stiller), a vulgarian with an orange toupee, who sees women as throwaway commodities, advises his son to get all the sex he can, anywhere he can and ends up in a Las Vegas hot tub with a blond (Kayla Kleevage, yes, Kayla Kleevage) whose breasts are so big they bring the show to a halt the same way a three-legged woman might? There is also an example of a "Mexican Folklore Dance" that involves a donkey with unappetizing sexual equipment. Here the characters are made to do and say things that are outside their characters, and maybe outside any characters.Ĭonsider the question of the parents of the newlywed Lila her mother ( Kathy Lamkin) is revealed as a very overweight fatso, with the implication that Lila will eventually balloon to such a size. They have specialized in over-the-top transgressive comedy (" There's Something About Mary"), but always before with characters who could survive their sort of acid bath. As the Farrelly brothers, Bobby and Peter do not know, there are certain kinds of scenes that are deal breakers, rupturing the fabric of comedy and becoming just simply, uncomfortably, unpleasant. After she collapses with an ugly sunburn, he meets the real girl of his dreams on the beach, and they fall in love while he neglects to mention that he is married.Īs Neil Simon and Elaine May knew, this is a good comic situation. Man ends his prolonged bachelorhood with an unwise marriage, discovers on honeymoon (then to Florida, now to Mexico) that she has Big Problems. That film was better in every way, not least because it did not require the Lila character to be revealed as a potty-mouthed sexual predator. She starred Charles Grodin as a passive-aggressive social climber, her own daughter, Jeannie Berlin, as his alarming first wife, and Cybill Shepherd as the WASP goddess on a Florida beach who he falls in love with on his honeymoon. ![]() The movie is a remake of Elaine May's splendid 1972 comedy, written by Neil Simon, much revised by May. ![]()
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