How one director tanked Eddie Murphy’s career in less than three years: “We really bonded”
There was a time when Eddie Murphy had real promise to become an enduring star. Unfortunately, he threw much of his talent away with a series of terrible films, becoming a symbol of cheesy, badly-written scripts.
While he has proved himself to have moments of brilliance in between these cinematic travesties with roles such as Donkey in the Shrek franchise and his Oscar-nominated turn in Dreamgirls, it seems as though Murphy just prefers a silly screenplay. Following his entry into showbiz with a role on Saturday Night Live, Murphy made a name for himself with several comedies that received widespread popularity, like Beverly Hills Cop.
Over the coming years, Murphy was a successful figure, and even roles like The Nutty Professor and Dr Doolittle suggested that the actor could find acclaim as the star of family-friendly comedies. That didn’t last long, though, and by the early 2000s, he took on a string of roles that completely derailed his career.
It started with a few roles that seemed like accidental duds – all actors have been there. Following the success of Shrek, Murphy appeared in The Adventures of Pluto Nash the following year, but it made history for being a massive box office flop. I’m not exaggerating. Made on a budget of $100million, the movie only grossed $7.1m.
He found more negative reviews with Daddy Day Care and The Haunted Mansion, but then the well-received Shrek 2 and Dreamgirls came around and suggested that perhaps it was just a little blip in his career. Winning a Golden Globe for the latter, Murphy’s career seemed to be back in a better position. That’s until he began collaborating with Brian Robbins, whose work truly signalled the beginning of the end for the actor.
Their first collaboration was Norbit, in which Murphy played several characters, including an obese woman and a Chinese man. The movie was incredibly poorly received by critics, who found very few redeeming qualities in the so-called comedy, which was simply a stereotype-ridden mess. Murphy unsurprisingly won ‘Worst Actor’ at the Golden Raspberry Awards while also taking home ‘Worst Supporting Actor’ and ‘Worst Supporting Actress’ for his various roles in the movie.
You’d think that Murphy would’ve taken this as a sign not to work with Robbins again, but instead, he returned to several more projects with him, all of which were just as badly reviewed. The next project they did together was Meet Dave, which underperformed critically and commercially. Despite the negativity their projects received, Robbins looked back fondly on the work he did with Murphy in an interview with Girl.com.
Explaining, “Well, I think that we had a really good time making Norbit. And that was a hard film to make, and that was a good experience together. I think he was really happy with the way the movie turned out, and it was successful. And he actually brought me into Meet Dave, and gave me the script for that. And that was also a really good experience, and went well, and we really bonded.”
Evidently, their bond was enough to inspire yet another collaboration, A Thousand Words, which was filmed in 2008 but released in 2012. It’s a truly terrible movie that has absolutely nothing good going for it, and it seemed like the final nail in the coffin that was Murphy’s terrible career choices.
Robbins concluded, “We share a similar comedic sensibility. And A Thousand Words, which we’re shooting now, is a script that I got to look at. And I gave it to him, because I just felt he would be brilliant in it.” Little did Robbins know that the film would turn out to be one of the lowest-rated movies of all time.
