Review: Norbit (2007)

Norbit
reviewed by Sam Osborn

Director: Brian Robbins
Screenplay: Jay Scherick, David Ronn
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton, Cuba Gooding Jr.
MPAA Classification: PG-13 (crude and sexual humor, some nudity and
language)

Norbit plays the same as any other multi-role vehicle that Eddie
Murphy hauls into theatres every few years. Its general mediocrity is
its charm; never asking anything of us as long as we don't ask much
from it. Occasionally the movie will surprise us, mounting a
particularly outlandish feat of slapstick antics or maybe opening the
throttle on its villain to hurl repulsive hilarity at the sad
protagonist. But mostly Norbit isn't more than a happy distraction. We
give Mr. Murphy ten dollars and he'll dress up in silly costumes and
play silly characters for ninety minutes. It's a fine deal; one that
isn't especially satisfying, but not especially offensive either.

The set-up is simple enough: awkward, skinny Norbit (Eddie Murphy)
loves his childhood sweetheart Kate (Thandie Newton), but is tied by
the wedding band to the mountainously large revulsion-cum-wife
Rasputia (also played by Murphy). The set-up, however, gets muddied by
impatient screenwriting, throwing in a complicated con-game to trip up
the characters when it's least necessary. This involves Cuba Gooding
Jr. as Kate's two-faced fiancée and Rasputia's head-busting brothers
led by Terry Crews.

Simple, high-concept premises work when they're kept to their own
quaint devices. Norbit doesn't need a half-baked struggle to gain
ownership of an orphanage. Such contrivances are included because of
the screenwriters' distrust in their principle characters. The
thinking follows that if a screenwriter makes more characters and
complicates the plot further than absolute necessity, the complexity
will translate into quality. But they forget that beauty is often
simple, and that Norbit, Kate, and Rasputia are all entertaining and
dimensional enough to fill the frame themselves.

But Murphy of course is there to entertain us throughout. And he
certainly gives it his all. Norbit's servile goodness is awkwardly
loveable, and his wife, Rasputia, succeeds in becoming the most
repugnant object since vomit. And as in any comedy, extreme versions
of stereotypes work best when there's a sad truth behind them. We've
seen lesser versions of Norbits and Rasputias in every one of our
neighborhoods. And Director Brian Robbins plays on this truthfulness
by making Norbit's town a place of sunny neutrality. There's no title
or season to it; just sun, green grass, the town and the suburbs. We
laugh at Rasputia because it's mean to laugh at the real-life versions
of her walking their dogs past our mailboxes. And when it comes to
slapstick, she works like a tube of lit dynamite. When she barrels
into a picnic table, it explodes into a shower of splinters. At one
point she plows through the mailman. He returns several scenes later
with a broken arm, a concussion and a bruised stomach. In Iraq,
Rasputia would be called a weapon of mass destruction.

She's a villain that's fun to hate and Thandie Newton is an easy
figure to love. Norbit delights as the bumbling fulcrum that pivots
the two back and forth. The film works fine this way, despite its
thick contrivances, and succeeds in its own blandly outrageous
decency.
Sam Osborn