Stereotypes On Steroids

As Satire, Eddie Murphy's Clumsy 'Norbit' Falls on Its Face

Viewed through a conventional, critical lens, "Norbit" is just another crass Eddie Murphy comedy. Of cours e the movie -- featuring the toothy comedian as a Chinese curmudgeon, a bespectacled goofball and a super-size female harpy called Rasputia -- is crude, offensive and shameless. And of course we're appalled at those bus posters of Rasputia -- in all her Victoria's Secret-y glory -- crushing her hapless weenie husband, also played by Murphy.

Maybe we should consider, instead, why films like "Norbit" -- Martin Lawrence's "Big Momma's House" farces and Murphy's "Coming to America" and "The Nutty Professor" come to mind -- are so perennially popular.

Could it be these movies amount to mass permission sessions? They give us license to laugh at things on Saturday night we'd decry on Monday morning. In the safety of a crowd, it seems, anything or anyone is fair game. And the more exaggerated the comedy, the funnier. And the safer, too: Surely, we quietly reason to ourselves, no one is really that fat, that geeky or -- and here's where it really gets dicey -- that stereotypically ethnic.

With Murphy as the master of ceremonies of "Norbit," there's an added measure of license. As the godfather, the professor emeritus of P.C.-busting, he's been given prerogative to do the outrageous since his 1980s "Saturday Night Live" era, when he played politically incorrect characters such as a bumbling Buckwheat, a Mister Rogers of the 'hood.

But in light of "Borat" -- last year's big kahuna of political incorrectness -- "Norbit" feels artless and callow. Both comedies traffic in stereotypes; the difference is that filmmaker Sacha Baron Cohen's knife is smarter and sharper as he speaks to real issues in society. Murphy, on the other hand, is just playing for laughs; his is sitcom satire rather than social satire. Still, the targets of these stereotypes can end up hurting just the same. (The very overweight woman sitting in front of me didn't so much as chuckle during the entire movie.)

The movie, which follows the misery of Norbit (Murphy), a nerd who's caught between his abusive, extremely rotund wife, Rasputia (Murphy in fat suit mode), and his beloved childhood sweetheart, Kate (Thandie Newton), does have its moments, most of them slapstick. There certainly is something funny -- on whatever primitive level -- about Rasputia speeding down a waterslide and breaking infrastructure upon her landing. And it's hard not to respond -- with groans, if not laughter -- to Rasputia flipping up a roll of tummy fat to prove to the pool attendant she's wearing swimsuit bottoms.

As Mr. Wong, Norbit's adoptive Chinese father, Murphy certainly tests the boundaries of political correctness. Outfitted in white latex and jaundice-yellow teeth and speaking in Charlie Chan English, he's a bigot who, at one point, refers to Rasputia as a "gorilla." Of course, this is Murphy's winky-winky aside to the audience: Since he's African American, he gets to make indirect fun of black people (just as Cohen makes fun of Jewish people). But can he do this as an Asian stereotype who's given to racist invective? (Now we're in Spike Lee, "Do the Right Thing" territory?) Even in the permissive environment of an Eddie Murphy comedy, it feels wrong and jarring.

"Norbit" isn't one of Murphy's best, a poor cousin to his other multiple-role comedies. As Rasputia, whose catchphrase is a brassy "How you doin'?," he's surprisingly unfunny. Norbit himself is a weak reworking of Jiff Ramsey, the socially challenged and funnier character Murphy played in 1999's amusing "Bowfinger." And 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.

But who knows: Boosted by a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination for his energetic performance in "Dreamgirls," Murphy hopefully will be too busy having his pick of quality projects to even think of making "Norbit 2."

Norbit (102 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, nudity and profanity.