The Nutty Professor (1996) is a remake featuring Eddie Murphy. The original, unfortunately, was made by Paramount (LOL) by Jerry Lewis in 1963. Many consider the original comedy classic. Personally, I’m not a huge fan. I always thought “Buddy Love” was a gigantic tool and the professor character was over the top.

In the remake with Eddie Murphy, Buddy Love is still a huge tool. This time, instead of making him an obnoxious lounge singer type, he’s a testosterone fueled fast talking clown. Irritating as he is loud, Buddy made me ill with each appearance.

But where this movie makes it more endearing to me was Murphy’s performance as the self loathing Klump. While all the jokes seem to be about weight and farts, Klump’s sadness in his eyes with each barb makes the character loveable to more than the future Mrs. Will Smith. (I did that so I could get Jada Pinkett Smith’s significant other tagged in the post. That may make me a Bad Boy.)

While the movie probably has more farts per minute than a late 80’s Weird Al Yankovic music video, I admit I had a grin on my face more than once during the famous dinner table sequences where Eddie plays multiple characters in the scene.

My favorite character, though, is not played by Murphy, though. The angry Dean of the university is played by the fantastic Larry Miller. His slow burn gives Edgar Kennedy’s famed slow burn a run for the money, but he manifests the anger with a cruel sarcasm that is a better payoff than Edgar’s frequent ire induced throwing of various objects to the ground.

Overall, if you haven’t seen the film yet, you should give it a shot. Universal may be the king of horror, but this is definitely a nice change of pace.

Grade: B

The Nutty Professor (1996)