Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton, Cuba Gooding Jr.

The Plot:

  Norbit (Eddie Murphy) is a geeky man who found himself joined at the hip, and later at the alter, to a loud, overbearing and deeply insecure lady named Rasputia (also Murphy). Rasputia commands an authoritarian grip over the otherwise demure Norbit, even after he discovers her in the throws of passionate infidelity with a dubious “Power Tap” dance instructor named Buster (Marlon Wayans).
  Norbit recoils to his one safe haven; he volunteers at the orphanage where he was raised. The orphanage is owned by a man named Mr. Wong (Murphy again) who is retiring to pursue his life long interest (whaling) and consequently is preparing to sell the orphanage to Norbit’s childhood sweetheart, Kate (Thandie Newton). Kate is kind, attractive and well-groomed, in other words she is everything that Rusputia isn’t.
  Norbit’s joy over Kate’s return to town is tempered when he finds that his repulsive wife and his three barrel-chested brothers-in-law are plotting with Kate’s shifty fiancée Deion (Cuba Gooding Jr.) to pilfer the orphanage and turn it into a gentlemen’s club.

The Point:

  This movie was fairly predictable, but far from formulaic. I’m not quite sure what Eddie Murphy was going for when he created the character for Norbit, but he obviously found it. Murphy, who consistently seems to find it hard to play one character per film, covers immense ground between Norbit, Rasputia and Mr. Wong. Murphy’s performances are so over the top that I could hear sixty years of a pack-a-day cigarette habit issuing forth with prodigious haste from a nearby fellow movie patron. Expect multiple belly laughs.
  Sometimes the crass humor in this film required of me a double take. Murphy exploded onto the scene in the 1980s with a racy, raunchy stand-up act that carried over into his films. But after marriage and children, Murphy toned down his films considerably. It seems not that his children are growing up but the “Old Eddie” is coming back.
  For better or worse there are tons of fat jokes in this movie. Also what struck me very odd was that there really is no redemptive moment for Rasputia. She remains a quasi-villain right up to the end. What is Murphy trying to tell us? Are fat people evil? Probably not all of them. Are they all insecure and cruel? One can only guess.