Norbit Critic Reviews

If Eddie Murphy gets an Oscar for "Dreamgirls" later this month, the deciding factor with voters may be his performance in Norbit. It's much more impressive than anything he does in "Dreamgirls."Read the full review

Not exactly uproarious. But Mr. Murphy, going back at least to his Gumby and Buckwheat days on "Saturday Night Live," has always had the ability to turn broad caricature into something stranger and more inventive.Read the full review

The only recommendable thing about Norbit is that he's not as bad as every other person in this movie.Read the full review

Much of the movie -- which Murphy wrote with a small posse of collaborators -- is taken up with the torturously dull, not to mention unbelievable, romance between Norbit and Kate (a disappointingly lackluster Newton) and the tedious agenda of Cuba Gooding Jr. as a schemer-manipulator.Read the full review

Murphy's story lacks even the basic form that held most of "The Nutty Professor" together.Read the full review

Murphy speaks in a breathy lisp, as if his mouth had been partially buttoned shut, and he doesn't give himself the nerd's traditional redeeming feature of a geeky, slide-rule intellect. Norbit, all frozen gawk, is just a very dim bulb.Read the full review

It's crass, cruel, and borderline offensive, but the laughs that could redeem all of that are missing. Material as bad as the tripe that comprises Norbit can be endured only if there's a payoff. In this case, the point seems to be that some actors will do anything for a buck.Read the full review

Murphy and his brother Charlie, who collaborated on the screenplay, seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from the latter's stint on "Chappelle's Show." Where Dave Chappelle used stereotypes to confront prejudice, the Murphys (and their co-screenwriters Jay Scherick and David Ronn) merely squeeze a few grudging drops from caricatures that were wrung dry in the age of vaudeville.Read the full review

Racially insensitive, politically incorrect and beyond crude.Read the full review