The Nutty Professor movie review (1996)

The Murphy version follows the broad outlines of the Lewis film, with one inspired addition: It makes the hero fat, in addition to making him shy and inept, and that doubles the opportunities for physical comedy. Jerry Lewis’ transformation from the professor into Buddy Love was a personality switch, but Murphy also goes through a complete physical morphing, from 400 pounds to average weight and back again, sometimes almost instantly.

As the movie opens, Murphy is Professor Sherman Klump, brilliant chemist and geneticist, and fat slob. He falls instantly in love with a new graduate student named Carla Purty (Jada Pinkett) and bashfully bumbles his way into asking her out on a date. Meanwhile, his position at school depends on raising new research funds, and the smarmy college dean (Larry Miller) puts on the pressure during a sarcastic meeting (“Anything I can get for you? Juice? Coffee? Rack of lamb?”).

Sherman's tendency when worried is to eat, and so he settles down with relief to the Klump family dinner table. Every adult member of the Klump family--Sherman's parents, brother and granny--is played by Murphy, who has always been a master of disguise (remember him as Gumby?). But here he outdoes himself, in a rising crescendo of vulgarity that would be disgusting if it weren’t so funny (the audience laughed so hard at Papa Klump's approach to colon cleansing that I missed the next six lines of dialogue). Not only does Murphy play the Klumps, but he also scores big laughs as a Richard Simmons clone on a TV exercise program.

The character of Sherman himself is a triumph of effective disguise combined with good writing and acting. The makeup by three-time Oscar winner Rick Baker adds pounds to Murphy's face and neck so seamlessly that Sherman looks completely convincing. And as Murphy plays him, Sherman becomes one of his most likable characters, good-hearted, sympathetic and funny. When Sherman morphs into Buddy Love, the thin character resembles some of Murphy's own abrasive stage incarnations; does this mean he'll be hosting telethons in 10 years? The plot, liberally inspired by the 1963 film, gets Sherman and the beautiful Carla to a trendy nightclub where Sherman is humiliated by a comic (Dave Chappelle) because he's fat (“I think I found where they hid Jimmy Hoffa”). Later Buddy Love returns to the club and gets revenge, although Carla’s attraction to Buddy is never quite accounted for in the fast-moving plot.