Tuesday, September 6, 2011

TASTE THE SOUP: Eddie Murphy has decided to descend from Bubble Hill to host the 2012 Oscars.

Murphy turned 50 this year, the age at which he pledged to retire from film and return to standup comedy, and in the past year he has continued to hint in this direction. It feels like Murphy has more riding on this gig than most would -- between this and Tower Heist, it's perhaps a final chance for Murphy to establish himself as a star with contemporary appeal for adult audiences, with the bite, intelligence, and swagger that so many of us miss. I am very much rooting for him to succeed.

5 comments:

  1. The Tower Heist trailer doesn't seem terribly promising--the "seizure boy" bit is kind of offensive, and the stuff with him and Sidbe is kind of ooky due to the age difference.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, but I do love a comeback. 

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jim Bell12:37 PM

    Adam, I will stand with you and root.  Raw remains one of the five best comedy routines of all time.  Eddie was awesome and maybe he could be again.  And if he is, we are too.  I'll be young again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. isaac_spaceman1:17 PM

    <span>I loved that era of Eddie Murphy, but "I'm going to quit movies and return to stand-up at 50" sounds like one of those things that people say and maybe mean but don't ever do, like "If X is elected President, I'm going to move to [country with sympathetic political leaning]" or "if we're both single when we turn 40, we'll get married."  It is very "hope I die before I get old," but, you know, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are pretty old. I'll bet they currently do not wish they were dead.  </span>

    ReplyDelete
  5. The pre-1990 Eddie Murphy was not just a comedian but a major cultural force.  What Eddie Murphy gave us in the SNL "Cotton Land" sketch and the "White Like Me" short, to name just two examples, is a qualitatively different kind of funny than he gives us with Donkey or The Klumps.  It would mean a lot to me if he could return to that kind of relevance late in his career.

    It's not 1983 -- obviously, and I'm not asking for a return to 1983 (please, god, no).  I'm not asking to see Murphy playing the witty ex-con or fun-loving streetwise hustler again -- though the Tower Heist trailer seems to promise something along those lines and I, like Matt, am braced for disappointment. 

    We could learn a lot, though, and laugh a lot doing it, if a fully operational Eddie Murphy, two-and-a-half decades older and wiser, were to take direct aim at the social and political landscape once again.

    ReplyDelete